How to Play Golf Card Game & Rules
Picture a chilled afternoon with friends, a deck of cards, and a healthy dose of competition. That’s basically the Golf card game in a nutshell.
Thing is, it’s got more names than it knows what to do with – Polish Polka, Turtle… sometimes it feels like a whole different game each time. But don’t worry, we’ll get you sorted.
Golf’s simple to pick up, tough to master, and always good for a few laughs. It’s great for beginners and seasoned card sharks alike. Think you got what it takes to score the lowest?
What You’ll Need
- Players: 2 or more is ideal, but it’s super flexible.
- Cards: One standard 52-card deck (you can add more if you’ve got a big group).
- The Will to Win: A little friendly competition makes this extra fun!
Types of Golf: Pick Your Flavor
Interestingly, there’s a few versions of Golf, so you’ll need to pick which you are playing. The most common ones are;
- Four Card Golf (sweet spot for 4 players)
- Six Card Golf
- Nine Card Golf (aka “Crazy Nines” – you’ll see why)
We’ll go through these individually throughout the post, so don’t worry, you’ll get everything you need to know right here!
How to Play 9 Gold Card Game
The Setup
For this version, you’ll need two standard decks of cards that you’ll blend together. The objective, as with all golf games, is aiming to keep your score as low as possible. To set it up;
- Decide a dealer by having everyone pick a card and highest value deals. Then have them shuffle the whole deck. They then deal nine face-down cards to each player.
- Dealer then puts the remaining cards face down to become the draw pile.
- Now each player arranges their nine cards (still face down) in front of them in rows of three, so they each end up with a three-by-three grid in front of them.
- The dealer then flips the top card of the draw pile up and creates a new pile next to it. This is the discard pile. The player to the left of the dealer then starts.
Gameplay
The player left of the dealer kicks things off, then it goes clockwise. On your turn, you’ve got three options:
- Option 1: Draw from the Draw Pile Take the top face-down card, then:
- Swap It: Replace ANY of your 9 cards (even a mystery card!), placing the old one face-up on the discard pile.
- Toss It: If you don’t like it, discard without replacing anything.
- Option 2: Grab from the Discard Pile: Because this card’s face-up, you MUST swap it for one of yours, sight unseen if it’s a mystery card… risky business!
- Option 3: The “Knock” When you’re feeling good about your hand, give the table a knock. Play goes around ONE more time, then the round ends.
Pro Tip: If you look at a face-down card on your turn (outside of the initial peek), you MUST discard it!
As in real-life golf, the aim is to get the lowest score possible, so in this example, you probably wouldn’t take the Nine of Clubs to get that. You simply place the card you do take in any one of your spaces and discard the card that was there.
This is how a round looks and you simply keep playing until a player knocks on the table at the beginning of their go. Everyone then gets one more round and it’s time to move onto scoring.
However, there are some important points to consider!
Firstly, Kings are worth zero points, so it’s a good idea to take them where you can.
Secondly, if you get a vertical run of the same number or value, you remove these cards completely. I’m not sure if this is official, but I like to have each row you fill mean you take away 15 points, and you don’t add up the score into the total.
Any remaining face down cards are flipped when scoring commences. If you get multiple vertical matches, you simply get minus another -15 points. Therefore, it’s possible to get minus 45 (-45) points a round).
Like golf, you play nine rounds like this, keeping score each round, and whoever ends up with the lowest score at the end wins!
How to Score 9 Card Golf
Once a round ends with a knock, everyone flips their cards face-up. Let’s tally those points!:
- Aces = 1 point
- 2-10 = Face value (a Five counts as 5 points, etc.)
- Jacks & Queens = 10 points each
- Kings = Lucky you! Worth 0 points
Oh, and to keep things fresh, if you get three cards in the same vertical row, say a ten on top of a ten on top of a ten, when scoring, you get to REMOVE the entire line of three cards, which means you take away 15 points from your score (even if you go into minuses) and
Play 9 rounds, add it up – lowest score wins. Golf logic, right?
How to Play 6 Card Golf
Pretty much the same as 9-card Golf, but this time, the dealer gives out six cards per player (making it great for games with more players). Every player then sets them up in front of them in two rows of three.
Cards are face down, with rounds drawing from either the draw or discard pile, replacing the cards and aiming for the lowest score possible.
How to Play 4 Card Golf
And finally, with four card, you deal four cards face down to each player, and two them in two rows of two, so a square.
Now, each player is allowed to look at the two cards closest to them, without the other players seeing. Then the game continues in the same way, drawing cards and replacing them, aiming for the lowest score possible and knocking when you think you’ll win.
And there we have, three ways to play the Golf card game. While it sounds super simple, it’s actually a ton of fun and it’s one I love to play with my family.
Perfectly, it’s great for play with kids. My six-year-old loves it and adding the scores up at the end is great for helping her love for maths. All in all, great game, and you’ll see how fun it can be!
