Snap! A Card Game for Families

I’ve always enjoyed card games. When I was in grade school and couldn’t get a sibling to play a game with me, I would play Solitaire all by my lonesome. (I guess that’s what Solitaire is all about, isn’t it??)

I still love games.

I was delighted to learn how to play Snap. This is a great card game that the whole family can play.

Once your grandchildren can recognize numbers, they are good to go!

How to Play

• For 2-3 players.
• One deck of cards. (For more than 3 players, use 2 decks of cards.)
• Object: be the person with all of the cards.

Choose a dealer. The dealer shuffles the cards and deals out all of the cards face down until all of the cards are passed out. (Some players might have more cards than other players but that is okay.)

Players do not look at their cards.

The player to the dealer’s left turns over her top card and places it face up next to her stack of cards. The next player turns over her top card. Play continues in like manner around the circle of players.

When one player notices that her face up card is the same as another person’s face up card, he calls out, “Snap!”

That player takes all of the face-up cards in her stack and that other person’s face-up stack. She puts those cards on the bottom of her face down pile of cards.

The game continues with the next player being the person to the left of the last person who turned a card face up.

If a player runs out of face down cards, she shuffles her face up pile and turns them over to use on her next turn.

If two players say ‘snap’ at the same time, each player puts her pile of face up cards in the center of the table. This creates a snap pool. There can be several piles of cards in the snap pool at one time.

When someone turns over a card that matches the top card of a stack in the snap pool, she says ‘snap’ and takes the whole snap pool and adds the cards to the bottom of her face down pile.

For example, in the picture above, you’ll notice that there is a 9 on a stack of cards in the snap pool and a 9 in the face up pile on the right side of the picture. If the person whose pile is on the right side of the picture said ‘snap,’ she would take her face up pile and the two piles in the snap pool and put all of those cards on the bottom of her face down pile.

If a player says ‘snap’ when there isn’t a match, her face-up pile is put in the middle of the table and becomes part of the snap pool.

When a player has no more face up or face down cards, she is out of the game.

The winner is the player with all of the cards.

If you’re playing with older grandchildren, you can make it a wee bit more challenging by speeding up the game. Have them turn their cards face up in a zippy speed. Tweens and teens love this extra bit of challenge.