(In Screw Your Neighbor, Kings are safe cards)
Imagine a card game where strategy meets sabotage, and friendships are tested in the best way possible. Screw Your Neighbor is a game of quick decisions, bold moves, and a little luck, where Kings are your safe haven, and everyone else is just trying to stay afloat. Perfect for game nights filled with laughter and lighthearted competition, this classic will have you plotting your next move—and hoping your neighbor doesn’t plot theirs first. Ready to learn how to play? Let’s dive in!
Card Game Rules
Screw Your Neighbour, or Ranter-Go-Round, is a classic card game for 3 or more players. The game requires a standard 52 playing card deck and is suitable for ages 6 and up. In Screw Your Neighbor, Aces are low and Kings are high. The objective of Screw Your Neighbor is to have the lowest card value.
For more classic games, check out our guides for War and Nerts.
If you are looking for cards to play Screw Your Neighbor with, check out a standard deck here or one of our more recent arrivals here.
Set Up
To set up a game of Screw Your Neighbor, players need to form a circle around a stable playing area. Every player gets three lives at the start of the game. Before gameplay can begin, every player must draw a card from a shuffled deck. The player with the highest card becomes the first dealer. Ties are broken by a redraw. The dealer then shuffles the deck and passes out one card, faced down, for each player.
How to Play
Gameplay begins with the player left of the dealer. The first person looks at their card and can either keep it or switch cards with the player to their left. Switches are permanent. Play then proceeds clockwise with each player having the opportunity to switch cards with the person on their left. If a player has a king, they must immediately flip it over. A player cannot swap with a King. A player who is to the right of a King must keep their card. On the dealer’s turn, they can either keep their card or choose the top card from the remaining deck.
After the dealer goes, all players turn over their cards. The player with the lowest card loses a life. Cards are reshuffled and the dealer position rotates clockwise.
The last player alive wins.
For more information about Screw Your Neighbor, check out Pagat's article here.
Looking for more card games to play? Check out this article:
40+ Great Card Games For All Occasions
About the author: John Taylor is a content writer and freelancer through the company Upwork.com. You may view his freelancing profile here. He has a B. A. in English, with a specialty in technical writing, from Texas A&M University and a M. A. in English from the University of Glasgow. You may view his previous articles about card games here and his LinkedIn profile here.
20 comments
Cool
That sounds like the game we called screw you neighbor. I learned it about 1974.
If you weren’t lucky, you could really take a beating!
Not for thin skined people!
Screw your neighbor is a great game, played it lots of weekends over my brother’s house for hr’s when we were young. Had Soooo much fun.
The script says the object is to have the lowest card, which is how I learned. The video say the opposite
We play that those with the same card, whether high or low, are both safe and the next high card loses. We called this game “I’m Satisfied “ because if you didn’t want to pass that’s what you said. Also, three lives/chips/coins and one On You Honor play (which could keep you in the game with no chips until you loose