Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links for which I receive a commission at no additional cost to you. Please see my full disclosure here.

Have you played Nerts yet? It’s so much fun! We played it for a recent game night and I can’t wait to play again. I am always on the lookout for a game you can play with a simple deck of cards and this one came up in a recent search. I can’t believe I never played this one before.

Nerts goes by several names – Peanuts, Pounce, Squeal and there is even a game set called Nertz. The game is also similar to Dutch Blitz. And, if you have ever played Solitaire, you will have a very short learning curve.

Every player needs their own unique set of 52 cards. This was easy to do as we seemed to have collected several oddball decks over the years. If you don’t have enough, they are easy to borrow from friends or neighbors. Or pick up cheap sets at Goodwill or Dollar Tree.

If you are having a fancier game night, you can get the Nertz game pack that comes with 12 different decks of cards.

Choose an area to play where you can spread out, but still all reach the middle. Each player will need to have five piles of cards in front of them and, as they come up, all Aces will go in the middle for everyone to play on.

How to play

Each player will shuffle their cards. Then, place four cards face up on the table in front of you (these are work piles) and next to it, count out thirteen cards to go facedown. This will be your Nerts pile.

Flip the top card of your Nertz pile face up on the pile. The remaining cards will stay in your non-dominant hand during the game.

When everyone is ready, one players says go and everyone moves their cards at the same time.

How it works

Each player will then play Solitaire with their cards, flipping over every third card in their hand and placing them on the work piles, alternating colors and in descending numbers. For example, if there is a red eight card, you can only put a black seven card on top of it.

You can move sets of multiple cards, like a 8, 7 and 6 to a 9 pile if the colors of the 8 and 9 are not the same.

However, you cannot move any cards to the Nerts pile face up card. The object is to use all of your Nertz pile cards. If you use the face up card from the Nerts pile on your work piles or the middle (more on that later) you can flip over a new face up card.

Whenever you have emptied a work pile, any card, from your hand or Nerts pile can fill it.

If you come up with an Ace at any time, you will move it to the shared middle of the table as you would in Solitaire. These cards are used by all players.

The cards in the middle, or foundation, piles are how you build points. Players will add to the pile as cards come up in their work pile, Nerts pile or as they are flipping cards over from their hand. Piles are built from Ace to King in order and with the same suit. For example, the next card on Ace of hearts is two of hearts.

The person who puts the King on the pile will flip the pile over so it is facedown.

What makes this game fun is that all of this is going on at the same time. Your eyes and hands are moving all over the table as you and your opponents are racing to go through all your Nerts pile cards (not the ones in your hand).

The first player to use all the cards from their Nerts pile yells, “Nerts” and game is over.

Scoring

The middle cards are collected and sorted by card design (thus the need for decks of cards that don’t match). Once sorted, the cards are counted and players are given one point for each card that reached the middle.

The bad news is that every card left in a player’s Nerts pile is worth minus two points and needs to be subtracted from the middle pile score.

For example, if you had 10 cards in the middle, you will have 10 points. But, you also had 3 cards left in your Nerts pile, giving you a score of minus 6. Adding the two together, your score is 4.

Redistribute all the cards to the players and play starts over.

While the first to 100 points is the goal, you can play to whatever you like or within a time frame.

Do I recommend it?

Absolutely. It’s a great game for family (kids 8+) or adults. Works great for 2 or more players. Quick to learn. Fast paced with friendly competition. It’s a cheap game night that is very mobile for play at campouts or the kitchen table.