• Category: addition and subtraction
• Published Dated: April 22, 2015
• Written by: Susan

In my last post, I mentioned teaching my young granddaughter a card game called Golf. It has been a hit among my group of friends, and was easy to teach my 6 year-old granddaughter. She enjoyed playing, and didn’t realize she was using math to total her points and add on to her score. We played this for well over an hour on an airplane ride too!

The game can be played with 2-6 players. Use one deck of cards. Each player is dealt 4 cards face down per round. Play 18 rounds-hence the name, Golf.
Object: Score the least number of points
Card values: Ace = 1; 2 through 10 are face value (2 points up to 10 points); Jacks and Queens are each 10 points; Kings = ZERO!; A PAIR = ZERO!; Three of a kind = -5! (That’s minus 5); Four of a kind = – 10! (minus 10)
Note that 1 King = 0, 2 Kings= 0, 3 kings= -5, and 4 kings = -10
Therefore, Kings, pairs, 3 and 4 of a kind, Aces and low point cards are better than high point cards, Jacks or Queens.

After each round, the value for the 4 cards is added up for each person’s score.
Examples: Jack, Queen, 4 and Ace: 10, 10, 4, 1 = 25 points
Ace, Ace, 2, King: 0, 2, 0 = 2 points
8, 8, 8, 6: -5, 6 = 1 point

How to play: Each player is dealt 4 cards face down. The rest of the cards are in a pile face down and become the pile to pick from. One card is faced up, and that is the Discard pile. *Place your 4 cards in a square, and keep 2 cards close to you, and 2 cards farther away. You may peek at the 2 cards CLOSE to you, but NOT at the other 2.

Here’s where the fun, chance, and risk start!

1. At each of your four turns for this round, you may choose either from the face up discard or from the face down pile. You cannot look at the card from the pile and then change your mind. Once you pick from the pile, it’s yours for that turn to either keep or discard. Everyone can see this card because it will now become one of your face up cards OR you will discard it.

2. At each turn, you must also face up one card and discard one card. If you don’t like the card you picked from the pile, then discard it and you must either face up one of the two cards close to you that you peeked at, OR take a chance and turn over one of the two UNKNOWN cards. That card stays face up now, and may not be moved or exchanged again. If you are stuck with a high value card, you never know, you may get lucky and pick another for a pair! Or maybe you lucked out with a low-scoring card OR a match to make a pair!

If you like the card you picked from the pile, you can place it face up in place of either one of the cards you peeked at that you don’t like, OR, take a chance and place it face up in place of one of the UNKNOWN cards.

After seeing it, even if you LIKE that UNKNOWN card, once you decided you would discard it, you cannot change your mind and it is placed face up in the Discard pile. *You cannot peek to see what’s under the UNKNOWN before deciding what to do.

Or, if you say you want to keep an UNKNOWN, once it’s faced up, it cannot be exchanged.

At this point, the next player has a choice of taking your discard or picking from the pile. If the next player LIKES the discard, then it would be picked and turned over in place of one of her other face down cards. For example: Discard is a Jack. Player 2 knows one of the cards she peeked at is a Jack, so she picks it for a PAIR, and turns it over in place of another card-either an UNKNOWN or the other one she peaked at. Or, if Player 1 had discarded an UNKNOWN card and it happened to be a King or Ace, or other low card, Player 2 might want that because it has a low score value.

Play continues until all four cards are face up. Score is tallied and then another set of four cards are dealt, until 18 rounds are played. Lowest score wins!

Children will have fun adding up their four cards, and can total the running scores as well. It lends well to to teaching regrouping of tens and ones, and use of negative points and subtracting! My granddaughter wanted to tally my score as well.