House rules

Setup

Play with 3 players (everyone for themselves), 4 players in 2 teams of 2, or 6 players in 3 teams of 2. Teammates sit alternately. Every player is dealt 7 cards.

Your turn

Play one card and place a piece on one of that card's two board spaces — or use a special card. You draw back up to 7 at the end of your turn. When the draw pile runs out, the discards are shuffled into a fresh deck.

Special cards

• Two-eyed jacks (J♦, J♣) are wild: place your piece on any open space.
• One-eyed jacks (J♠, J♥) remove one opponent piece. Removing is your whole turn — you don't also place.
• Jokers do either one — place anywhere or remove an opponent piece — but never both.

Dead cards

If both spaces for a card in your hand are taken, it's dead. Once per turn you may discard a dead card and draw a replacement, then play normally.

Lines

Five of your pieces in a row — horizontally, vertically, or diagonally — form a line. Corners count as a free piece for everyone, so four pieces plus a corner make a line. Once a line is formed, its pieces are locked and can never be removed.

Winning

Make two connected lines: they must touch — either crossing through a shared piece (an L, T, X, or a nine-in-a-row) or sitting right next to each other (like two adjacent parallel rows). Two lines far apart don't win — keep playing until two of your lines connect.