Card games for two.

01♠

The short version, if you’re in a hurry

You don’t want to think about anything: War. You can learn it in two minutes, and it has no decisions to make.

You want a real game, with math and decisions that matter: Sweep. It’s the best two-player game on the whole site.

You want something you both already know: Macao. It works with two, but it’s a different game than with six. See below for why.

02♥

Sweep: built for two

Sweep is the only one of the five that loses nothing with two players. Quite the opposite: it gets better. You play a card and pick up from the table the combination that adds up to exactly its value, and the whole game lives in what you leave behind.

With four players, whatever you leave on the table passes through three hands before it comes back to you, so you can’t really plan. With two, every card you leave is a direct offer to your only opponent. The game becomes a matter of asking “if I play this, what can they take?”, and that’s exactly the kind of decision that keeps a game alive after the third match.

It also runs the longest of the five, 20–30 minutes, which is an advantage with two players: it doesn’t end before you’ve warmed up.

03♦

War: two minutes to learn, zero to think

War is strictly for two. It can’t be played any other way here. Each player turns over the top card, the higher card takes both, and on a tie, war is declared.

It has no decisions. None at all. That makes it useless if you want a good match and perfect if you want something else: teaching a child the order of the cards, keeping your hands busy while you talk, or playing something at one in the morning.

One detail surprises everyone: the size of the war comes from the card that tied. Two 8s means eight cards laid down by each player. Two queens means twelve. And the ace, although it’s the highest card in a comparison, counts as one for size, so a war of aces is a single card.

04♣

Macao for two is a different game from Macao for six

Macao works with two, but it’s worth knowing what changes: every penalty comes back to you.

With six players, a 2 you play hits your neighbor and then moves on around the table. You have time to breathe. With two, the person you penalize is the only other person who can play, so any penalty chain you start comes right back at you. A two-player game gets sharper and much shorter.

The same goes for the 4. “Skip a turn” means, with two players, that you play again. In a two-player match it’s by far the strongest card in the game, and it’s worth saving.

The practical takeaway: if you’re playing with two, keep your blocking cards for the end and don’t start chains you can’t finish.

05♠

Seven Cut thins out with two

Seven Cut has 32 cards and four in your hand. With two players, a trick is two cards, and the cut that’s supposed to extend the fight extends it by just one turn for two people.

You can play it, and it isn’t unpleasant. But the charm of Seven Cut lies in deciding whether it’s worth spending your seven when cards from three people have piled up on the table. With two, the table is always poor, and the decision nearly makes itself.

If there are two of you and you want exactly that Seven Cut feeling (memory, patience, spending the cut at the right moment), play it, but know going in that it’s the small version of the game.

06♥

Liar Liar needs more people

With two, Liar Liar practically doesn’t work, and that’s worth saying plainly.

The game rests on the fact that only the player after you can call you. With two, “the player after you” is always the same person, who sees every play you make and knows exactly how many cards you hold. Bluffing turns into a coin toss between two people staring at each other.

From four players up it recovers, and at six it’s at its best. If there are two of you, save it for next time.

07♦

How to play, in practice

Open a table, choose the game and send the other person the address. You don’t have to be in the same room and you don’t have to install anything. It plays in the browser, and anyone who gets the link can watch the table, even without an account.

If you’d like to practice on your own first, the host can seat a bot in the empty seat. The match then doesn’t count toward the leaderboard, but the rules are exactly the same.