Swoop

Goal

Get rid of all your cards before anybody else. Every other player scores points for the cards they still hold. The game ends after the deal in which a player reaches 200 points or more, and the player with the lowest score wins.

Cards

Use standard 52-card decks, each with its 2 Jokers: 2 decks for 3 or 4 players, 3 for 5 or 6, and 4 for 7 or 8.

Ranking

Suits don’t matter. From low to high the cards rank A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, J, Q, and K, so the Ace is the lowest card. 10s and Jokers have no rank.

Starting hand

Everyone gets 19 cards. Without looking at them, put 4 face down in a row in front of you. These are your mystery cards. Put 4 more face up, one on each mystery card, and pick up the other 11 as your hand. Set the leftover cards aside. They’re not used in the deal.

Play

1. Play 1 to 4 cards of the same rank. They can come from your hand, from your face-up cards, or from both. Play goes to the left.
2. Play equal to or lower than the top card of the pile and your cards go on top of it. If the pile is empty, your cards start it.
3. Play higher than the top card and you must first pick up the whole pile into your hand. Your cards then start a new pile.
4. Swoop. When the top 4 cards of the pile are the same rank, the whole pile is set aside for the rest of the deal and you play again. You can never make more than 4 cards of one rank on top, so if the top 3 cards are 8s, you can add only 1 more 8.
5. 10s and Jokers. You can play 10s or Jokers on anything. They always swoop: they and the whole pile are set aside, and you play again. You can swoop as many times in a row as your cards allow.
6. Mystery cards. You can play a mystery card once the face-up card over it has gone, and only as the first card of a turn. Turn it face up and play it, whatever it is. You can add cards of the same rank from your hand or your face-up cards. If it’s higher than the top card, you pick up the pile as usual.
7. Going out. The first player to get rid of every card, hand, face up, and face down, wins the deal. Score the deal, and the next deal starts with the player to the left of whoever started this one.
8. Dead deal. If 200 plays in a row go by without a swoop, the deal ends with no winner.

Scoring

The winner of the deal scores 0. Every other player scores all the cards they still hold, in hand, face up, and face down:

• Ace: 1 point
• 2–9: face value
• J, Q, and K: 10 points each
• 10s and Jokers: 50 points each

After a dead deal every player scores what they hold. Add each deal’s points to your score. When the game ends, players tied for the lowest score share the win.

Playing with your own deck

You need paper and a pencil to keep score. Write one numbered line for each deal, with every player’s points for that deal and their new total. When a deal looks stuck, count the plays since the last swoop.

How this version differs

• The game ends at 200 points. The published rules play to 500.
• Every card you still hold scores. The published rules score only the cards left in your hand, so face-up and mystery cards would score nothing.
• A deal with 200 plays in a row and no swoop is dead. Nobody wins it, and every player scores what they hold. The published rules have no limit, and a deal can go on forever.

Open the rules page