Black Peter – Play Online for Free

Black Peter is one of the first card games children learn in the German-speaking world, and grown-ups still enjoy it too. All the cards pair up except one: Black Peter himself. In turn, everyone draws a face-down card from a neighbor, lays down any pairs that form and hopes the unwanted odd card lands somewhere else. Whoever holds it at the end has lost. Here you play against two computer opponents.

How the game got its name cannot be said for certain. A popular explanation points to the robber Johann Peter Petri, a sidekick of the notorious outlaw Schinderhannes, who was known as "old Black Peter" and is said to have invented the game in prison from 1811 on. The game is probably older than that, though, as its rules are on record by 1821. In earlier days people took the Jacks out of an ordinary deck, left only the Jack of Spades in as Black Peter, and the loser got a smudge of soot on the face from a burnt cork. The German idiom of passing someone the Black Peter, meaning to shift the blame onto them, goes back to the game. English speakers know the same family as Old Maid, in which one Queen is removed from the deck, leaving another Queen without a partner as the card nobody wants, while the French call it Vieux Garçon, the Dutch Zwarte Piet and the Swedes Svarte Petter.

Lay Down Pairs, Get Rid of Peter: The Rules of Black Peter

The game uses a 32-card deck running from the Seven to the Ace, as used for the German game Skat, plus a special Black Peter card, 33 in all. Each of the three players receives eleven of them. Your hand lies face up at the bottom, the two opponents sit to your left and right, and you only ever see the backs of their cards.

• What makes a pair: Two cards of the same rank in the same color, black with black or red with red. The Seven of Clubs goes with the Seven of Spades, the Queen of Hearts with the Queen of Diamonds. Every card therefore has exactly one partner, except Black Peter, who has none.
• The start: Any pairs a player already holds after the deal are laid down by the game straight away.
• Drawing: In turn, each player draws a face-down card from a neighbor's hand. You draw from the opponent on your left by tapping one of their cards. If the card you draw completes a pair, the pair leaves the table automatically.
• Going out: Whoever runs out of cards is safe and drops out of play, which a check mark next to the name shows. The circle then closes around that player.
• The end: When only one player is still holding cards, that player has lost and turns Black Peter face up in the middle of the table.

Who moves first rotates from game to game, just as the deal passes around a real table. On every level the computer opponents draw purely at random. What changes is how often they rearrange their cards before your turn: never on Easy, every other time on Normal and every single time on Hard. On top of that, you start out holding Black Peter less often on Easy and more often on Hard.

How to keep track of Peter:

• Follow the card's journey: Peter travels in a circle, from you to the opponent on your right, from there to the one on your left and from that player back to you. A card that gets drawn always goes to the end of the hand that receives it. If you watch which position the left opponent draws from in the right opponent's hand, you often know exactly where Peter sits now.
• Plan for the level: On Easy the opponents keep their cards in order, so your memory pays off in full. On Hard they shuffle their hand every time before you draw, and then all that is left is luck.
• Keep calm when he is yours: The opponent on your right draws blindly from your hand. With a little luck, Peter gets picked on the very next turn.
• Mind how many cards are left: The fewer cards a hand holds, the likelier you are to grab Peter if he is in there. Toward the end, every single draw gets more exciting.

Pairs, Bad Luck and the Queen of Spades: Five More Games for the Whole Family

These games go well with an afternoon of drawing pairs, because they are just as easy to learn or put one unpopular card at the center of things:

• Mau-Mau: Another childhood classic. Cards are played by suit or rank, Sevens, Eights and Jacks liven up every round, and the first to play out every card wins.
• Memory: Here, too, you hunt for pairs, but every card lies face down on the table and only your memory counts. Two cards belong together only if they are completely identical.
• Hearts: At the four-player table of this trick-taking game, the Queen of Spades is just as unpopular as Peter is here. Whoever collects her in a trick takes thirteen penalty points in one go.
• Heart to Heart: A solitaire game made entirely of hearts, in which matching ranks leave a heart-shaped layout of 25 cards two at a time until nothing is left.
• Uno: The colorful shedding game for the whole family. You play whatever matches the color or number of the top card, and action cards such as Skip or Draw Two make life hard for the next player.