Open a table.
Deal them in.

The best card game to play with friends

The best card game to play with friends is the one where you both know the rules, or neither of you knows the rules. If only one of you knows them it usually creates an unfair advantage, and that is not a game, that is a lesson. When you both play on equal ground, that is when the gameplay is at its finest.

So either pick the one you both grew up with and love, or pick one neither of you has tried and read the rules out loud together. Both work. It is the gap between you that spoils an evening, not the difficulty of the game.

If you want our opinion anyway: Speed is the most fun card game here. No turns, it is all about speed. Smack those cards.

Start from the head count, not the game

A list of the best card games to play online is always sorted by the game, which is the wrong end of it. What decides the evening is how many of you are free, and what follows from that: whether anybody needs a partner, and how long a match may run.

Two of you. Speed if the call is short, because nobody waits for a turn. Crazy Eights if one of you has never played cards on a screen, since the rules take a sentence. Gin Rummy if you have a whole evening, because a match to a hundred points is several rounds with a real decision in each one.

Three of you. Rummy or Go Fish, both of which let the host pick three seats before the deal. Three is the size almost nothing online will deal for, and Rummy at three is the best version of it.

Four of you. Spades, if all four want the same game and two of you are happy to be partners. Otherwise Rummy or Go Fish at four, which need no partner and no bidding and are far easier to explain to a table that is half distracted. Go Fish is the family one, and the right game when a child wants to join in.

Card games are perfect for people in long distance relationships. You get one on one time with the two player games, or you can double date with friends. Compared to action games they give just enough challenge to not get bored, but enough breathing room to focus on what the other person is saying.

How a table works here

Open the table before anybody joins it, and you get one link per empty seat, numbered when there is more than one. Send them however you already talk to those people. Whoever opens a link takes that seat, so send each one to a person rather than into a group chat.

No account, no app, no download, no password, no tier. Every game is free and you might see an ad now and then, which we will try to keep discreet. The only thing anyone types is a name for the chat. Every game keeps a short list of the tables your browser is sitting at, and a table left alone waits 48 hours, so an unfinished match can be finished the next day.

You can switch voice on before you make a table, off until you ask for it, so you can talk while you play. The audio usually runs browser to browser, which shows your IP address to the others at the table, and goes through a Cloudflare relay only when that fails. None of it is kept. Typed chat is in every room either way.

You choose the game and the size without making an account, which is the part we enjoy most about it: no profile, no friends list to curate, and nothing taking your email off you before you get a card. Pick, send, play.

What is here, and what is coming

Connected by Cards is aiming to eventually have all the games you can play with a deck, or a few decks, of cards. Thirty-seven play with friends today, among them Crazy Eights, Speed, Gin Rummy and Spades. They are old card games rather than anything new, because those are the ones people are most likely to already know. Cribbage is the newest, two players to 121 with the crib, the pegging and the show all scored for you. No Hearts yet. It is on the list.

Every one of those thirty-seven also plays against the computer, one click from its own page, which is the cheap way to learn a game before you send anybody a link. At the Crazy Eights, Go Fish and Newmarket computer tables, among others, you pick how many computer players sit down.

And when nobody is free at all, there are six solitaires on the other shelf, dealt fresh every time you open one. Klondike is the one everybody knows. FreeCell deals every card face up, so a hand you lose is one you played wrong. Spider wants two decks, Pyramid is pairs that add to thirteen, TriPeaks is one long chain, and Yukon is Klondike with no stock to fall back on.