Screw Your Neighbor Game Rules

(In Screw Your Neighbor, Kings are safe cards)

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.