Screw Your Neighbor
A fast, simple British parlor card game (also called Ranter-Go-Round or Cuckoo) where players try to pass off their worst card and avoid being stuck holding the lowest hand at the table.
Coming soon — not yet playable
Rules
Each player is dealt one card face down, which they may look at privately. Play proceeds in a circle: on their turn, each player may either keep their current card or swap it, unseen, with the next player's card (who must accept the swap, no matter how bad their own card is) — unless that next player holds a King, in which case they may refuse the swap and reveal the King to prove it.
The player to the dealer's left (or, in some versions, the dealer themselves) has the option to swap with the deck instead of a neighbor on their turn. Once every player has had a turn, all remaining cards are revealed simultaneously.
Showdown: the player (or players, in a tie) holding the lowest card must pay a penalty into the pot or "life" — commonly tracked as poker chips, with players eliminated after losing a set number of lives (traditionally three), and the game continuing in escalating rounds until only one player remains.
Strategy notes: Because there's no real hand to build (each player only ever holds one card), the entire game is a mix of luck and light social bluffing — a player forced to decide whether to swap is really just deciding whether they trust their neighbor to be holding something worse, since the swap is mandatory for the receiver (barring a King).
Common house rules
Kings (or Aces) block swaps
The standard 'protected' rank is the King in most British accounts, but some tables use Aces instead, or protect both — agree on which rank(s) are swap-proof before dealing.
Three lives, then out
The most common life-tracking house rule gives each player three chips/lives; losing all three eliminates that player from the game, which continues until one player remains.
Dealer swaps with the deck
Standard rule: the dealer, having no neighbor to their left within the circle to swap with in the normal direction, instead may swap their card with the top card of the undealt deck instead of a neighbor.
Related games
Based on shared category, origin, and rules that reference each other.
Cheat
Also called I Doubt It or Bullshit — a pure bluffing game where players discard face-down while lying about what they played, and others may call the bluff.
Learn the rules →Three Card Brag
A classic English pub and home gambling game, and the ancestor of poker's bluffing tradition: three cards each, with a unique 'blind' betting option for the brave.
Learn the rules →Chinese Poker
The original, simultaneous-deal version of Chinese Poker: all thirteen cards dealt at once, then arranged into three hands (top, middle, bottom) and scored against every opponent.
Learn the rules →Crazy 4 Poker
A Shuffle Master casino game where players make the best four-card hand from five cards, with the option to bet up to 3x their ante if holding a pair of aces or better.
Learn the rules →