Five Crowns Rules

Five Crowns is a rummy card game played over 11 rounds. The first round deals three cards and each round adds one more, up to 13 cards in the last. Every round has a different wild card, set by how many cards were dealt, and the aim is to finish the game with the lowest score. It was published by Set Enterprises in 1996 and is now sold by PlayMonster. It uses its own deck with five suits, but you can play almost the same game with ordinary cards, where it is called Three Thirteen. This guide covers the Five Crowns rules, the wild card for each round, scoring, the regular-deck version, strategy and odds.

Five Crowns Rules at a Glance

The Five Crowns Deck

The game comes with two 58-card decks, which are shuffled together into one pack of 116 cards. Each deck has five suits: stars, hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds. Each suit runs from 3 to King (3 to 10, Jack, Queen, King), so there are no Aces or 2s. Each deck also has three Jokers, six in all.

Books and Runs

• Book: three or more cards of the same rank, in any suits, such as 8♣ 8★ 8♠. Because there are two decks, a book can hold identical cards, such as K♠ K♦ K♥ K♥.
• Run: three or more cards in sequence in the same suit, such as 5♣ 6♣ 7♣ or 9★ 10★ J★ Q★.
• Wild cards can stand in for any card in a book or run, and you can use as many as you like. If 7s are wild, 9♦ 7♣ J♦ is a run, with the 7 standing in for the 10 of diamonds.

How to Play Five Crowns

1. Deal. Shuffle both decks together. In round 1, deal three cards to each player, one at a time. Put the rest face down as the draw pile and turn the top card over to start the discard pile.
2. Draw. The player to the dealer’s left goes first, and play goes clockwise. Start your turn by taking the top card of the draw pile or the top card of the discard pile.
3. Discard. End your turn by discarding one card. Keep your books and runs in your hand until you can go out.
4. Go out. When your whole hand, apart from one card, fits into books and runs, lay them down and discard the last card. You only use the number of cards you were dealt, and your final discard can be any card.
5. Last turns. Once someone has gone out, every other player gets one more turn. Lay down any books and runs you can, then discard. You can’t add cards to another player’s books or runs.
6. Score. Cards in books and runs score nothing. Everyone adds up the cards left over in their hand.
7. Next round. The player to the dealer’s left deals the next round with one more card each. After round 11, the lowest total wins.

Rounds and Wild Cards

The wild card for each round is the number of cards dealt, so if you lose track, count your hand. Jokers are wild in every round.

Five Crowns Scoring

Example: in round 5, 7s are wild. Someone goes out, and after your last turn you are still holding a Queen, a 7 and a Joker. You score 12 + 20 + 50 = 82 for the round.

A few situations the rules cover:

• A wild card you can’t use may be discarded. It saves you points, but the next player can pick it up.
• If the draw pile runs out, shuffle the discard pile to make a new one.
• A tie for the lowest score can stand, with several winners, or the tied players can play a 6-card tie-break round.

Playing Five Crowns with a Regular Deck: Three Thirteen

Three Thirteen (also written 3-13) is the same game with ordinary playing cards, and Five Crowns is a version of it with its own five-suit deck. It has the same 11 rounds, from 3 cards up to 13, and the same rotating wild card: 3s in round 1, then 4s, and so on up to Kings in round 11.

Five Crowns Strategy

• Get rid of high cards you can’t use. If someone goes out early, a King you were saving costs 13 points, a wild card 20 and a Joker 50.
• Keep your wild cards while they help. A wild card fills a gap in a run or completes a book, but if you can’t fit it in, discarding it saves 20 points.
• Watch the discard pile. What other players pick up shows what they are collecting, so avoid giving them the card they need.
• Prepare for the last turn. When someone goes out you get one more turn, so try to hold a hand that turns into books and runs with one good draw.
• Don’t give up early. The last rounds have the most cards and the highest penalties, so a big lead can disappear in round 11.

Five Crowns Odds

• Round 1 is the easiest to win straight away: 10.5% of 3-card hands are already a book or run when dealt, and the first player can go out on their first turn 26% of the time.
• The 5-, 8- and 11-card rounds are the hardest: the first player can go out on their first turn only 3.0%, 2.6% and 3.5% of the time, against 12% with 6 cards. Those hands are two cards more than a set of three-card groups, so going out needs a five-card book or run, or two of four cards.
• Wild cards: 16 of the 116 cards are wild in every round (six Jokers and the ten cards of that round’s rank). A hand holds 0.4 wild cards on average in round 1 and 1.8 in round 11, and 36% of round-1 hands hold at least one, against 87% in round 11.

The round-1 figure for dealt hands and the wild-card shares are exact. The other figures come from 40,000 simulated deals for each round.

More Rummy Games

For another rummy game that changes every round, try Phase 10. For longer games, see Rummy 500 and Canasta, or start with the basics in the rummy rules guide.

For a bigger table: Hand and Foot, the Canasta family game for two partnerships, where each player has a second packet of cards to play.

Five Crowns: frequently asked questions