How to play Go Fish
The rules of Go Fish, and a game played out one move at a time.
The rules are below, and they are the shortest on the site. If you would rather see it than read it, press play: we deal a short game on the real table and stop on every move to say what happened, what you could do, and which rule did it.
Press play and we deal a short game of Go Fish on the real table. It stops on every move and says what just happened and what you could do next.
The deal
One standard pack, no jokers, and two, three or four of you. Everybody gets seven cards, whatever the size of the table. The rest go face down in the middle. That pile is the ocean.
Get dealt all four of a rank and they go straight down in front of you as a book, before anyone has asked a thing. Whoever made the table asks first.
Asking
On your turn you pick one other player who still has cards and ask for a rank. It has to be a rank you already hold, so asking for jacks tells everyone you have a jack.
If they hold any, they hand over every one of them. No choice, no hiding one. Then you ask again, the same person or somebody else, the same rank or a new one.
If they hold none, they say go fish, and you draw one card from the ocean. Pull out the rank you asked for and you ask again. Anything else and the turn moves on. If the ocean is empty, a miss just ends your turn.
Books and empty hands
The moment you hold four of a rank, they go down as a book. It happens mid-turn, from a hand-over or from the ocean. A book you fished while asking for something else still goes down, but the turn passes all the same.
Run out of cards and you are not out. At the start of your turn you draw one from the ocean and ask with that. Only when the ocean is empty too do you sit out. If you take the last card from the only hand left to ask, your turn stops there, even on a hit, and the next player draws to start theirs.
How it ends
The game is over when the thirteenth book goes down. Count books, not cards. Most books wins, and a tie at the top is a draw.
Listen more than you ask. Every question at the table tells you a rank somebody holds, and the best ask of the game is usually a rank that was asked of you two turns ago.