How do you play old maid?

Question

How do you play old maid?

Answer 1

Try to collect pairs of 2 of the same  card (for example, 2 red Painted butterflies). When you have a pair of 2, you can remove them from your hand. Be the first player to empty your hand of cards and you win. Since there is only one Old Maid card, she can never make a pair – whoever has her can never win the game!

Deal or pick cards until all the cards are handed out among the players. Everyone takes a moment to check their hands for pairs of cards, laying their pairs face up in front of themselves.

Starting with the player to the left of the dealer, each player in turn picks a card from the person to their left. For example, player 1 picks one card from player 2's hand.

If you draw a card and it makes a pair with any card in your hand, lay the pair face up in front of you. If it doesn't make a pair, your turn ends, and the play continues with the player to the left.

The first player to run out of cards wins, but the play continues until only the Old Maid card is left.

Answer 2

http://www.wikihow.com/Play-Old-Maid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Maid

Answer 3

There are retail card decks specifically for playing Old Maid, but it is just as easy to play with a regular deck of 52 cards. In this case, one Queen is removed from the deck and the remaining 51 cards are used. Another way is to use all 52 cards plus a single Joker card if the pack of cards includes Joker cards (the game will end when the Joker is the only card left).

The dealer deals all of the cards to the players. Some players may have more cards than others, this is acceptable. Players look at their cards and discard any pairs they have (i.e., 2 Kings, 2 Sevens, etc) face up. Players do not discard three of a kind. In some variants, the colors in a discarded pair must match: ♠ with ♣ and ♦ with ♥.

Beginning with the dealer, each player takes turns offering his hand facedown to the person on his left. That person selects a card and adds it to his or her hand. This player then sees if the selected card makes a pair with their original cards. If so, the pair is discarded face up as well. The player who just took a card then offers his or her hand to the person to their left and so on. A player is allowed to shuffle his hand before offering it to the player on his left. In some variants, all players discard after the dealer has drawn.

The object of the game is to continue to take cards, discarding pairs, until one is left with no cards. The player left with the odd queen (that has no matching queen) is stuck with the "Old Maid" and loses.