The Newmarket card game online, under the Michigan rules
Run the suits up and claim the four pots. Three to eight players, ace high, the Michigan way.
How a hand goes at this table
The full pack goes round one card at a time to every seat and to one spare hand, so a couple of seats hold a card more than the rest. Before the lead, every seat puts one counter on each of the four pots, marked for the ace of hearts, king of clubs, queen of diamonds and jack of spades, and the dealer puts an extra one on each, two in all. The player after the dealer leads.
A lead is the lowest card you hold in any suit, and one card per suit lights up for you to choose from. Whoever holds the next rank in that suit must play it, and for them only that card lights up; it may be you again. The sequence climbs in rank order until it reaches the top card or a card no seat holds. That is a stop, the table says so, and whoever played last leads again, lowest card, any suit.
Playing a pay card takes its pot. Play your last card and the hand ends: every other seat pays you one counter per card still held, and the counters move for you. Unclaimed pots ride into the next deal, which is how the big ones grow. In a room the match runs until somebody holds a hundred and fifty counters, and the tenth hand ends it whatever the score. At the computer table you deal for as long as you like.
Why the spare hand decides the hand
At a table of four, ten cards sit face down in the spare hand, the dummy or the widow in other rule books, and they never move. Every one of them is a stop waiting to happen. Hold the seven of clubs and never see the six go by, and either a computer is sitting on it or it is in the spare hand, in which case your king of clubs is not reaching its pot this deal.
So the lead matters more than it looks. A suit where you hold a run of your own cards is safe, because you play it out yourself. A suit where you hold a pay card and the cards under it is better, because your own low cards carry the sequence up to the pot before another seat gets a turn. The computers weigh a lead the same way: their own longest run, with a pot card in it when they have one. Keep the loose single cards until the sequences already played have shown you where the gaps are.
The computers see their own hand and the pots, nothing else. Not your cards, not the spare hand. When one beats you to a pot, it earned it. In a room nobody sees another hand either: the table sends every seat its own cards and everybody else as a number.
Michigan rules, and the Newmarkets this is not
Several games go by the name, and most rules pages never say which one they mean. Wikipedia has Newmarket turning up in England in the 1880s as a cut-down Pope Joan, and the American version, Michigan, is the one John McLeod's rules page describes. This table plays Michigan, checked against that page: ace high, the four pay cards above, every seat dressing every pot and the dealer paying double, no auction or exchange for the spare hand, and no central kitty.
If the Newmarket you know makes you change colour after a stop, ranks the ace low, pays out on the four kings, or lays the pay cards out from a second pack on a board, that is another branch of the family, and we have not stirred it into this one. A British preset is on the list. It is not here yet, and the page says so rather than fudging it.
Other names: Michigan in America, Boodle in some of the older books, and Stops for the family, after the gaps that end each sequence. Same bones under every name. Lowest card leads, the next rank follows, a gap hands the lead back.
Seats, seeds and counters
Pick three to eight seats above the felt at the computer table: you and two to seven computers. Four is the default. Leave automatic turns ticked and the computers play a card every second or so; untick it and each computer card waits for you to press a button, which is the way to learn the game one play at a time. The table history under the cards lists every card played and every stop.
Every deal has a seed, the number in the box beside the seat count. Type one in, press New table at the same seat count, and the same cards come out, so a friend on their own screen can play your deal and compare notes afterwards. Next deal keeps the scores and the unclaimed pots and moves the deal one seat round. New table asks before it wipes the counters back to a hundred.
Counters are a running score, chips with no cash behind them, and a score can go below zero. The high contrast switch turns the felt grey and gives every playable card a border and an underlined label, so colour never has to do the work alone.
What is not here
No table for two. Newmarket needs three seats at least, whether they are people or computers, so a pair cannot sit down alone: bring a third. There is no computer seat in a room either, so a table of three is three people. The seed that repeats a deal belongs to the computer table and does nothing in a room, because the shuffle there is the server’s and nobody gets to pick it.
Nothing is stored. Shut the tab and the deal, the scores and the pots go with it, and the next visit starts from a fresh seed. No account, nothing installs, and it runs in whatever browser you already have, phone or laptop alike.
It costs nothing to play. There may be the odd ad, which we will keep as discreet as we can manage. Newmarket is here because the aim is every game a deck of cards can play, and this is one of the old ones.
Questions people ask
how to play newmarket card game
Lead the lowest card in any suit. Whoever holds the next rank must play it, and the sequence climbs until the top card or a card nobody has stops it; the last to play leads again. A♥, K♣, Q♦ and J♠ each win a pot. Empty your hand and every other seat pays you a counter per card left.
Newmarket card game how many players
Three to eight players, and you choose which kind. Online the host picks the seat count and sends a link for each of the others. At the computer table it is you plus two to seven computers. Four is a good size: two seats hold eleven cards, two hold ten, and ten sit in the dummy.
Newmarket card game 2 players
Not with two. Newmarket needs three players at least, whether they are people or computers, so a pair cannot sit down alone. What two of you can do is bring a third, or a fourth: make a table, send the links, and the game deals the moment everybody is in.
Newmarket card game online
Both ways. Open the room, pick three to eight seats, and send everyone their link; nobody needs an account or an app. Or take one seat at the computer table and let two to seven computers take the rest. Same rules, same pots, same felt either way.
newmarket card game other names
Michigan in America, Boodle in some of the older books, and Stops for the whole family, named after the gap that ends a sequence. The Michigan rules are the ones dealt here, and the British Newmarket is a different branch. Pope Joan, its nearest cousin, is on the same shelf with a board and more pots.
How to play
A full pack goes out round the table and into one spare hand, so a couple of seats hold a card more than the rest. Before the lead, every seat puts a counter on each of the four pots and the dealer puts an extra one on each. The player after the dealer leads.
A lead is the lowest card you hold in any suit. Whoever holds the next card up in that suit must play it, and it may be you again. The run climbs in rank order, two up to king and then the ace, until it reaches the ace or a card no seat holds. That is a stop, and whoever played last leads again.
Playing the ace of hearts, the king of clubs, the queen of diamonds or the jack of spades takes its pot. Play your last card and the hand ends: every other seat pays you a counter for each card still held. Pots nobody claimed ride into the next deal, which is how the big ones grow.
Online it is three to eight people at one table, the host's choice, and the counters are the score. A seat reaching a hundred and fifty takes the match, and if nobody has by the end of the tenth hand the highest total wins. At the computer table you take one seat and two to seven computers take the rest.
Watch a game played out, one move at a time, with the rules in full.