Slapjack Game Rules

(In slapjack, players win cards by being the first to slap the pile when a Jack is drawn)

Card Game Rules

Slapjack, or Slaps, is a game for 2-4 people and played with a standard 52 playing card deck. The objective of Slapjack is to win all of the cards by quickly slapping the deck whenever a Jack is played.

For more classic card games, check out our guides for Six Card Golf and Cribbage.

If you are looking for playing cards to play Slapjack with, check out a standard deck here or one of our specialty Slapjack decks here.

Set Up

Before gameplay can begin, a dealer must be selected. Each player draws one card from a shuffled deck. The player with the lowest card becomes the dealer. The dealer shuffles the deck and passes out all of the cards faced down to each player in a clockwise fashion.

How to Play

Starting with the person to the left of the dealer and going clockwise, players place the top card of their deck into the center of the group. Players must draw away from them so that everybody sees what the card is at once. If the card drawn is a Jack, players try to be the first one to slap the deck to win all of the cards in the pile. The pile is shuffled and added to the winner’s pile. The player who eventually gets all of the cards wins.

If players slap the pile without there being a Jack, that player must give a card to the player who laid down the previous card.

When a person runs out of cards, they have one chance to win a slap. If, for instance, a player runs out of cards, a Jack is played, and they lose the slap, they are out of the game.

If a card is played on top of a jack before anyone can slap it, the jack is lost and play continues.

For more information on Slapjack and its rules, check out Wikipedia's article here or 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.