No.247
Old Maid (Babanuki)
Japanese name: ババ抜き
Materials
- A standard 52-card deck plus one joker
How to play
- Shuffle and deal all cards one at a time among the players. From your hand, lay pairs of the same rank face up in the centre. Suits do not matter.
- Agree on the order of play and which direction to draw from. On your turn, have the neighbour in that direction offer their cards face down and draw just one.
- If the drawn card matches a rank in your hand, discard that pair to the centre. Otherwise keep it. Play then passes to the next person.
- Players with no cards leave the drawing circle. Skip them when choosing whom to draw from. They may choose to gather discarded cards or watch the play.
- Continue even when only two players remain. Finish when all matching pairs are gone and just one player holds the joker. Change dealers for the next round.
Ways to adapt
Preschool children: fewer cards, with two of each rank plus the joker. Primary school children: all 53 cards.
Variations
Jiji-Nuki: Without using a joker, draw one card out of 52 face down without showing it to anyone. Play the same way with the remaining 51 cards, and when the last one remains, open the face-down card. The difference is that you don't know the numbers on the remaining bills.