Old Maid

Rules and how to play

Old Maid is a card game where players discard cards of the same rank from their hands in pairs, and whoever holds the joker (called “baba” in Japanese) until the end loses. In Japan, this game is called Babanuki and is played with a joker instead of removing a queen. This page uses 53 cards: a standard 52-card deck plus 1 joker.^[1]

Cards are dealt out one at a time to every player until none are left. Some players may get 1 card more than others. With 4 players, that is 14, 13, 13, and 13 cards; with 3 players, 18, 18, and 17; and with 2 players, 27 and 26.^[1][3]

After the deal, each player takes pairs of cards of the same rank from their own hand and discards them face up on the table. Suit and color do not matter. If you have 3 cards of the same rank, discard only 2 and keep 1; if you have 4, discard both pairs. The joker has no match, so it stays in the hand of whoever holds it.^[1][3]

Turns go clockwise. On your turn, choose 1 card from the face-down hand of the player before you (on your right) and draw it. If you have a card of the same rank as the card you drew, discard those 2 cards. If not, add the card to your hand. Next, the player on your left draws 1 card from your hand.^[1]

Players finish in the order their hands become empty. There are 2 ways to finish: discard your last pair using the card you drew, or have your last card drawn from you. A player whose hand becomes empty when discarding pairs right after the deal also finishes (this rarely happens).^[1][3]

If the player who draws finishes with that card, the next player has no one to draw from, so their turn is skipped without drawing. The player after them draws from the skipped player’s hand. For example, right after Red finishes, Green does not draw, and Yellow draws from Green. On this page, the name tag of the player being drawn from has a dotted border, and on your turn the status line also shows whose hand you draw from.^[1][3]

When only 1 player still has cards, the round ends. The player who still has cards at the end (the one left with the joker) loses. The other players are ranked 1st, 2nd, and so on in the order they finished. If 2 players finish at the same time (when a player draws another player’s last card and also finishes by pairing it), the player whose card was drawn ranks higher.^[1][3]

On this page, you choose 1, 3, or 5 rounds, and the overall winner is decided by the total of the points earned for each round’s rank (with 4 players, 3, 2, 1, and 0 points from 1st place down; with 3 players, 2, 1, and 0 points; with 2 players, 1 and 0 points). If players are tied, whoever placed higher in the final round wins.

The dealer for the first round (the first player to be drawn from) is chosen at random, and the player on the dealer’s left starts by drawing from the dealer’s hand. The dealer moves 1 seat clockwise each round. In Old Maid played by drawing from the player before you, having an even number of cards in your hand when you draw tends to be an advantage. So this page deals the cards so that the dealer is the 1 player whose number of dealt cards differs from the others (with 4 players, the dealer gets 14 cards). This almost removes the difference in the chance of winning between seats.^[1][4]

Your hand is shuffled automatically every time after you draw. There is no button for sorting. Your hand is not arranged in rank order (if it were, the joker would always be at one end).

Jiji-nuki (hidden-card variant) and house rules

Jiji-nuki (hidden-card variant): This is played without the joker. One card is removed from the 52 without showing it to anyone and set aside, and the remaining 51 cards are played the same way as Old Maid. Of the removed card’s rank, 1 card is left without a match, and whoever holds that card (the “jiji”) until the end loses. No one knows which rank is the jiji, so it stays unknown until near the end. On this page, you can choose it under “Jiji-nuki” in the menu, and the removed card is turned face up and shown at the end of the round.^[2]

Jiji-nuki can be chosen with 3 or 4 players. With 2 players, if a card you draw from your opponent does not match any card in your hand, you would know that it is the jiji.^[6]

Old Maid in English-speaking countries: The game is played without a joker, using 51 cards with 1 queen removed, and whoever holds the leftover queen loses. Most often, players are not ranked in the order they finish, and the game only decides the 1 player who loses. The way cards are drawn and pairs are discarded is the same as in the Japanese game.^[7]

Other ways of playing include one where the players still holding cards at the end win and one with 2 jokers. The rules for these vary between sources, so this page does not include them.^[2]

Controls on this page

First, in the panel to the right of the 3D board (below it on narrow screens), choose the number of players (2–4), the number of rounds (1, 3, or 5), and whether to play Jiji-nuki, then choose how to play. With “Easy”, “Medium”, or “Hard” under “Play vs computer”, you are in the red seat and the computer draws for the other seats. With “4 players on this device” (the number is the one you chose), players take turns on one device. A curtain appears every time the turn changes, and when the next player presses the curtain button, only that player’s hand becomes visible.

With “Play a friend (send a link)”, you send the room’s link to play together. If you do not have enough players, “Fill empty seats with the computer” lets the computer take the open seats. The computer also draws for a player whose connection stays disconnected. In games with 3 or more players, “Leave (the computer takes over)” replaces “Resign”, and the computer draws for the player who left.

Your hand is lined up face up at the near edge of the table. On your turn, the face-down hand of the player before you is shown large in the middle of the near side of the table (in 2 rows if it has 8 or more cards). Press the card you want to draw, and it moves toward you and glows; press it again, or press “Draw” at the bottom of the 3D view, to draw it. Press another card to choose again.

The card you draw goes to the right end of your hand. If it makes a pair, the 2 cards are discarded to the middle of the table. Then your hand is shuffled. Other players’ hands stay face down on the left, far, and right sides of the table, and each name tag shows the seat’s color, number of cards, and the place they finished. The name tag of the player whose turn it is glows at the edge, and the name tag of the player being drawn from has a dotted border. Dragging the table rotates the view slightly, and you can switch views with “Angled” and “Top-down” at the top right.

The “Button controls” panel to the right of the 3D view (below it on narrow screens) also lets you choose a card by pressing the buttons for the face-down hand of the player before you, then press “Draw” to draw it. With a keyboard, move to the face-down hand buttons with the Tab key, move between cards with the left and right arrow keys, and select one with Enter or the spacebar; press it again or press “Draw” to draw it. The panel also shows your hand, the last move, each seat’s card count and score, and the ranking for each round. Even on devices where the 3D view is not available, you can play with these buttons alone.

“Undo move” is not available, so you cannot see the card you drew and then draw again.

Strategy tips

• Human players’ hands are shuffled every time. The hands of human players (you and your friends) are shuffled automatically after every draw, so their order does not tell you where the joker is. In a game with friends, it makes no difference which card you draw.
• Look for the computer’s habit. When the computer on Easy holds the joker, it has a habit of always putting it in the same place in its hand after its own draw. The computer on Medium sometimes shows this habit. The computer on Hard has no habit. If you draw the joker from the computer, remembering where it was in that hand may help you avoid it next time.
• Watch the card counts. The fewer cards the player before you has, the greater the risk of drawing the joker. For example, if that player has only 2 cards, the joker and 1 other, the chance of drawing the joker is one half. Use the card counts on the name tags to think about who is likely to hold the joker.
• With 2 players. The cards that would pair with the cards in your hand are all in your opponent’s hand. The only thing you do not know about your opponent’s hand is which card is the joker.
• In Jiji-nuki, count the discarded cards. At most 2 cards of the jiji’s rank can be discarded (for every other rank, all 4 cards are discarded by the end). Late in the round, counting the ranks that still have only 2 cards discarded gives you a clue as to whether a remaining card is the jiji.

The name and history of Old Maid

Babanuki, the Japanese game played on this page, belongs to the same family as the game known in English-speaking countries as Old Maid. “Old maid” is an old-fashioned term for an unmarried older woman, and the game is named for the single queen that is left without a match. The Japanese word “baba” (old woman) is said to come from this name.^[1][6]

Sekai Yugiho Taizen, a Japanese book of games published in 1907, names “O-baba-nuki” (Old Maid), also called “Kuin-nuki” (queen removal), as a well-known game. The same book describes “O-jiji-nuki”, in which 1 king is removed, and also recommends a way of playing in which 1 card is removed so that no one knows which card it is. Jokers do not appear in this book.^[5][6]

It is not clear when people started playing with the joker. One theory holds that playing with the joker was a Japanese invention, but this has not been confirmed. In English-speaking countries too, playing with a joker is known as a variant.^[6][8]

Old Maid in English-speaking countries is already recorded in books from the first half of the 19th century. The way it is played in the UK and the US today uses 51 cards with 1 queen removed and decides the 1 player who loses. In Japan, the usual way is to play with the joker as the odd card out.^[1][7][8]

Sources

1. Wikipedia (Japanese), “ババ抜き” [Old Maid] (opens in a new tab)
2. Wikipedia (Japanese), “ジジ抜き” [Jiji-nuki] (opens in a new tab)
3. “ババ抜きのルールを徹底解説” [A thorough guide to the rules of Old Maid] (Torasobi; in Japanese) (opens in a new tab)
4. Masaki Arakawa, “ババ抜きにおける勝率の偏りを低減する方法の提案” [A Novel Method for Reducing the Win-Rate Bias in Old Maid] (Research Reports of National Institute of Technology, Ube College, vol. 72, 2026; in Japanese) (opens in a new tab)
5. Masayasu Matsuura (ed.), “世界遊戯法大全” [Sekai Yugiho Taizen] (Hakubunkan, 1907; National Diet Library Digital Collections; in Japanese) (opens in a new tab)
6. Hideki Fujii, “トランプのジョーカー～どうして『ババ』と呼ぶように？” [The joker in playing cards: Why did it come to be called “baba”?] (Asahi Shimbun Digital, Kotoba Magazine, 2014; in Japanese) (opens in a new tab)
7. John McLeod, “Old Maid” (Pagat) (opens in a new tab)
8. Wikipedia (English), “Old maid (card game)” (opens in a new tab)

Frequently asked questions

How many players can play?

You can play with 2–4 players. You choose the number in the menu. When you play the computer, you’re in the red seat and the computer draws for the rest. In a game with friends, you can start by letting the computer take any seats you don’t have enough players for.

How is Jiji-nuki different from Old Maid?

Old Maid on this page uses 53 cards, adding 1 joker to the 52-card deck, and whoever is left with the joker at the end loses. Jiji-nuki doesn’t use the joker. One card is removed from the 52 without showing it to anyone, and whoever holds the card left without a match (the jiji) loses. In Jiji-nuki, no one knows which rank is the odd card out until near the end.

What happens to the turn order after a player finishes?

When the player who draws finishes with that card, the next player has no one to draw from, so their turn is skipped without drawing. The player after them draws from the skipped player’s hand. When a player finishes because their last card is drawn, play continues in the usual order.

Can 2 players play?

Yes. With 2 players, the cards that would pair with the cards in your hand are all in your opponent’s hand, so the only thing you don’t know about your opponent’s hand is where the joker is. Jiji-nuki can only be chosen with 3 or 4 players, because with 2 players you would know which card is the jiji.

What difference does the computer’s level make?

At every level, the computer chooses the card it draws at random. What differs is where the computer puts the joker after its own draw while it holds the joker. On Easy, it has a habit of always putting it in the same place; on Medium, it sometimes shows this habit; and on Hard, it has no habit. If you notice the habit, it becomes easier to avoid the joker. In Jiji-nuki, no one knows which card is the jiji, so the level makes no difference.

How is the overall winner decided?

You play the number of rounds you chose (1, 3, or 5), and whoever has the most points in total wins. With 4 players, places are worth 3, 2, 1, and 0 points from 1st place down; with 3 players, 2, 1, and 0 points; with 2 players, 1 and 0 points. If players are tied, whoever placed higher in the final round wins. The loser of each round (the player left with the joker) is shown in that round’s results.

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