Learn how to play Spit, a fun, fast and simple 2-player card game that’s great for kids and adults.
Spit is a shedding type game for two players. It requires a standard 52 playing card deck and is suitable for ages 8 and up. The objective of Spit is to be the one who loses their cards first.
Set Up
To set up a game of Spit, players need to sit across from each other around a stable playing area. After shuffling the deck, each player receives 26 cards. Players then build up their own Tableau.
Tableau
To build the Tableau, each player makes five stacks. The first stack has one card, the second stack has two and so on until the fifth stack has five cards. Only the top card of each stack is flipped over.
The remaining 11 cards will form the player’s Spit pile.
In Spit, 2s are low and Kings are high, with the Ace connecting them. That means you can play either a 2 or a King on a face up Ace in the Spit pile.
How to Play Spit
At the start of the game, each player places the top card from their Spit pile in the middle of the gameplay area. Using the top cards of the Tableau, players try to get rid of cards by playing them onto the middle piles in descending or ascending sequence.
Once a card in the Tableau is played, the card beneath it can be flipped over. If a pile becomes empty, the player can move a top card to fill up the space from a different stock pile to form a new pile. Then flip the next card over in the previous pile.
If a player cannot use any of their Tableau cards, the top card from their Spit pile is used to restart the sequence.
Once a player runs out of cards in their Tableau, any player can then slap one of the middle piles, with the aim of slapping the smaller one. The pile that they slap becomes their next deck. The decks are shuffled and the game repeats itself. The goal is to slap the smaller pile so many times that eventually, you run out of cards.
When a player doesn’t have enough cards to form a Spit pile, only one middle pile is made.
If both players cannot use their Tableau cards and both of them have run out of their Spit pile, the round ends with both players trying to slap the smaller middle pile.
The player who runs out of cards first, wins the game.
This game should be played as fast as possible, with each player only using one hand to place cards.
Check out this video to see a game of Spit in action:
