About Deck & Table
A free reference for the card games people actually play — built to settle an argument in under a minute, not to be read end to end.
What this is
Deck & Table is a rules reference for classic card games. Every game has the setup, the turn order, the scoring, the arguments people actually have, a printable cheat sheet and a scorekeeper. There are no accounts, no adverts, no pop-ups and no newsletter.
It exists because looking up a rule mid-game is usually miserable. You get a page of history before the rules, or a rulebook PDF, or a forum thread from 2009. The aim here is that you can find the answer, settle it, and get back to the table.
How the rules are chosen
Most traditional card games have no single official ruleset. They spread through pubs, families and school playgrounds rather than through a publisher, so they picked up local variations along the way. That is a feature of the games, not a problem to be tidied away.
So the policy is:
- One clear ruleset is presented as the main rules. You should be able to start a game from the top of the page without making decisions.
- Where sources genuinely disagree, the difference goes under House rules & variations rather than being silently settled. If two ways of playing are both common, both are described, and the page says to agree before dealing.
- Every game cites the references it was checked against, at the bottom of the page, with the date it was last reviewed.
- Nothing is invented. If a rule is unusual or specific to certain groups, it is labelled that way.
Found a mistake?
Rules errors are worth reporting and get fixed quickly — please email hello@deckandtable.com. It helps enormously if you say which game, which section, and how your group plays it instead.
Corrections to the rules themselves are treated as more urgent than anything cosmetic. A wrong rule sends someone into an argument with bad information.
Who makes it
Deck & Table is made and maintained by one person. The whole site is open source — you can read every line of it, including the rules content, on GitHub.
It is free, and there is no plan to put it behind a paywall, cover it in adverts, or ask for an email address.
Last updated .