Old Maid Card Game Rules

Old Maid is a simple card game for two or more players, and one of the first many children learn. One Queen is taken out of the pack, so one of the three Queens left can never be paired. Players take turns drawing a card blind from their neighbour’s hand and putting down pairs, and whoever is left holding the last Queen at the end is the Old Maid. In Britain the same game is often called Scabby Queen. This guide covers the Old Maid card game rules, the Scabby Queen version, the main variations and what the odds say about who ends up with the Queen.

Old Maid Rules at a Glance

How to Play Old Maid

1. Take out one Queen. Remove any one Queen from a standard pack and put it away unseen. That leaves 51 cards and three Queens, so one Queen will always be left over.
2. Deal everything. Shuffle and deal all 51 cards one at a time, starting with the player on the dealer’s left. It does not matter if some players have one card more.
3. Put down your pairs. Everyone looks at their cards and puts down every pair: two sevens, two Kings and so on. Suits do not matter. With three of a kind, put down two and keep one; four of a kind is two pairs.
4. Offer your hand. The dealer fans their cards face down and holds them out to the player on their left.
5. Draw one. That player takes one card without seeing it. If it makes a pair with a card in their hand, they put the pair down; if not, they keep it.
6. Pass it on. The player who just drew now offers their own cards, face down, to the player on their left, and so on round the table.
7. Go out. When you have no cards left you are safe and take no further part. Play simply skips you.
8. The Old Maid. In the end every card is paired except one Queen. Whoever holds it is the Old Maid and loses.

A mistake to watch for: if a player puts down two cards that are not a pair, three cards will be left unpaired at the end instead of one. Under Bicycle’s rules the player who made the mistake becomes the Old Maid.

How Many Cards Does Each Player Get?

Because you put down your pairs before play starts, hands shrink quickly. These are the numbers for a 51-card pack:

Whatever the deal, you hold only five or six cards once the dealt pairs are down. In a four-player game it takes about 31 draws to find the Old Maid.

Scabby Queen: the British Version

Scabby Queen is Old Maid with a sting in the tail. Take the Queen of Clubs out of the pack and match pairs by colour as well as rank – two red sevens, two black sevens. That leaves the Queen of Spades with no partner: it is the Scabby Queen. Otherwise play exactly as above. The loser then pays a forfeit: the pack is shuffled and the loser draws a card, and gets that many raps on the knuckles with the edge of the pack – the card’s face value for number cards, ten for a Jack or King and 21 for a Queen. A red card means soft raps, a black card hard ones.

Old Maid Variations

Old Maid Odds: Who Ends Up With the Queen?

Drawing is blind, so which card you pick makes no difference: if the player you draw from holds the Queen among five cards, you have exactly a one-in-five chance of taking it, whichever card you choose. But your seat can matter, because of how many cards each player starts with and who offers first. In 200,000 simulated games for each table size, played to the rules above:

• Three players: the dealer has the best seat. The dealer ends up as the Old Maid only 20% of the time; each of the other two players 39%–40%.
• Four players: it is fair. Every seat is between 24% and 26%.
• Five players: the dealer has the worst seat. 29% for the dealer and 27% for the player on their left, against 13%–16% for the other three.
• Holding a lone Queen early matters less than you’d think. In a four-player game, a player with an unpaired Queen after the first discards ends up as the Old Maid 26% of the time, against 25% for everyone else – the Queen moves around too much. With two players it matters a lot more: 64% against 36%.

Taking turns to deal evens all of this out over several games.

Tips for playing Old Maid

• Keep a straight face. The only real skill in Old Maid is not giving away where the Queen is when your neighbour reaches for your cards.
• Mix your cards before you offer them. Many players tuck the Queen in the same spot every time – at the end or right in the middle – and others soon notice.
• Watch the player on your right. A pause, a smile or a card pushed slightly forward can tell you where their Queen is.
• Don’t overthink your draw. If the cards have been mixed, every card is equally likely to be the Queen.

Where Old Maid Comes From

The rules of Old Maid were first printed by Eliza Leslie in The American Girl’s Book in 1831, and in England in 1835. Girls played it as Old Maid with three Queens removed; boys played Old Bachelor with Jacks. It is probably older: the German game Black Peter is recorded in 1821, and the French Vieux Garçon appears in print in 1853. In 1883 a London firm sold a nursery-rhyme pack called Merry Matches, one of many special Old Maid packs since.

More Card Games

For more family card games, try Go Fish, Cheat, Switch, President or Chase the Ace.

For a bigger, noisier group: try Spoons – one spoon fewer than players, and nobody wants to be left without one.

Another classic for children: Snap, the quick-reaction game of matching cards.

Another easy family game: Sevens, also known as Fan Tan or Parliament.

Old Maid: frequently asked questions