Asshole Rules
Written November 19, 2003

Asshole is the quintessential card game for people looking to waste time. It’s flexible because players can come and leave at any time without wrecking the game and simple enough that even the heavily intoxicated can participate. In short, it’s a card game targeted at high school and university students.

1. Deal out an entire deck. If you’re playing with more than 6 people, you might want to consider adding a second or third deck to the mix.

2. Organize your cards by rank from low to high. 3 is the lowest, ace is the highest. It’s good to have doubles or triples. It’s especially good to have 2’s, as they are a kind of wild card. It’s fucking awesome to have Jokers, which are the best cards possible.

3. The basic object of the game is to get rid of all your cards before everyone else. You do this by playing a card higher than the one played before you. If you don’t have a higher card, you have to pass and miss out on a chance to get rid of cards.

4. Someone has to start each round, which is called “leading”. When you lead, you can play any single card in your hand, or you can play any pairs or triples you may have. Everyone else has to follow by playing higher cards – singles on singles, pairs on pairs and so forth – unless they have to pass. When the round reaches a point where nobody else can play or it comes back to the person who originally led, the cards are swept and whoever played the strongest cards (i.e. the last person to play) gets to lead the next hand.

5. 2’s are special. A single 2 can beat any single card or any pair, while a pair of 2’s can beat a triple. 2’s cannot beat each other. A Joker is super-duper special, beating any possible hand instantly and ending the round.

6. The first person to get rid of all their cards becomes the next round’s president. The second person out becomes the vice-president. Conversely, the last person to lose their cards becomes the asshole and the second-last person becomes vice-asshole. At the beginning of the next hand, the president receives the asshole’s best 2 cards (Jokers, 2’s, etc) in exchange for any 2 cards in the president’s hand. The vices do the same, but with 1 card. The asshole has to shuffle and deal, but gets to lead the first hand of the next round as a compensation prize.

7. New players entering the game midway automatically come in at the asshole position. A sequence of cards (4,5,6,7,8, etc) in a round that involves all players means that everyone gets to throw away a card of their choice.

And that’s about all there is to it.

Man I was really reaching on this one. Massive lack of content for my section led me to write rules for popular high school card games. That's about all I can say here.