Best Family Card Games for All Ages

If it’s been a while since you’ve played cards, some of the top card games for a fun family game night include Hearts, Spades, War, Crazy Eights, and Go Fish.

In today’s digital age, you don’t even need cards to play. For example, you can play Hearts free online at Hearts.co. Whether you’re logging online to teach your kids how to play a classic card game or digging out your card deck from the drawer, you can reduce stress with these calming card games, too.

Trick-Taking Card Games

Trick-taking games can be an amazing way to spend time with the family. They have been around for ages, but Hearts and Spades are still two of the most popular trick-taking games today.

Hearts

Hearts is a unique trick-taking game because the goal is to avoid taking tricks, specifically any with the Hearts suit or the Queen of Spades card. Hearts can be played with as few as two people and up to as many as six.

Players pass three cards to an opponent at the beginning of each round before play starts. Each player must follow the suit of the card led, if possible. The highest card of the leading suit wins the trick.

Hearts are worth one point, while the Queen of Spades is worth thirteen. The game is played until someone reaches one hundred points. At this point, whoever has the lowest score is the winner.

Spades

Unlike Hearts, Spades is all about winning tricks. Typically played with four players, the goal is to correctly bid the number of tricks a team of two will take in each round.

In this game, Spade suit cards always trump other suits. Players must follow the suit led in each play, if they can. The highest card or the Spade card played wins the trick.

The goal of Spades is to meet or exceed bids and earn the most points. The gameplay continues until at least one team (or player) hits 500 points or another predetermined score.

Other Classic Card Games

You can never go wrong with a classic card game like Go Fish, War, or Crazy Eights. They’re popular among families and children of all ages.

If you’re unfamiliar with how to play, here’s what you need to know about each:

Go Fish

This is a great game for younger players. Usually played with two to six people, the goal of Go Fish is to win the most ‘books’ of cards. A book is any four cards of the same kind (e.g., four Aces, four Kings, four Queens, four threes, etc.).

A player will ask for a specific card, such as a two. Their opponent must turn over every two they have. Otherwise, the asking player must ‘go fish’ by drawing a card from the deck. The game continues until every set, or ‘book,’ is collected. Whoever has the most books at the end wins.

War

War is played by two people, and each player receives half the card deck (or twenty-six cards). The objective is to win all the cards by drawing and comparing the top cards of each player’s deck. Whoever has the higher card wins both.

If the drawn cards are equal, a ‘war’ commences. This means that each player must play two cards (one face-down and the other face-up). The highest face-up card wins all of the cards at stake. The game goes on until one player has every card.

Crazy Eights

This is another fun card game anyone can play. The goal is to be the first to get rid of all cards by matching the suit of the top card on the discard pile.

Eights are considered wild cards and can be played at any time, allowing the player to choose a new suit. The game goes on until one player is out of cards. Other players will tally their cards for points, and the person with the lowest score wins.

Game On!

It doesn’t matter if you stick to the classics or test yourself with a trick-taking game, you’re bound to have a great time playing cards with friends. To get some extra practice, try a game of Hearts on Hearts.co for free!