But, the good news is, you don’t have to count! Simply deal out all of the cards in the deck. The number of cards dealt to each player when playing Old Maid will vary depending on how many players you have. How Many Cards Do You Start With In Old Maid? Specially made packs of ‘Old Maid’ cards might have varying numbers of cards. Old Maid is traditionally played with a standard deck of 52 cards, minus 1 card (often the Queen of Clubs), making it 51 cards. That way players don’t know if they have the potential ‘Old Maid’ card in their hand until the very end.įAQ’s About Old Maid How Many Cards In Old Maid? One of our family favourite variations is to remove a random card without any players knowing which card it is. Some variations also involve creative card exchanges, where players offer their cards to each other and try to form pairs. Old Maid can have various rule variations, such as using multiple decks of cards to accommodate more players or adding additional cards to make the matching process more challenging. The player who ends up with this card is considered the loser of the game. The goal of Old Maid is to avoid being the last player with the “Old Maid” card. The player left with the unmatchable card (the “Old Maid”) is the loser. The game continues until all pairs have been formed and discarded.

If a player runs out of cards, they are out of the game. Players take turns drawing cards from the player to their right and forming pairs if possible. If the card they picked doesn’t match any of the players cards they are holding, they add the new card to their holding collection.

Picture of old maid cards