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The best card games for two people
Most card games list "2–5 players" and mean it politely. At two, a game built for four often loses the thing that made it work — there is no table to read, no alliance to break, and the cards you did not take simply go to the only other person.
Everything below is either designed for exactly two, or genuinely better at two than at any other count.
The five picks
Jaipur
Best overall — the one to buy first
- Designed for two only, and it shows in every rule
- A game runs 20–30 minutes, and best-of-three is the real experience
- Simple enough to teach in five minutes, tense enough to replay all evening
Gives up: nothing much. If you only own one two-player card game, this is it.
The Fox in the Forest
Best game played in rounds for two
- Solves the old problem that games like Hearts and Whist need four people
- Special card powers bend the rules each round
- Scoring punishes winning too many rounds, which keeps it close
Gives up: you need to like games where everyone puts down one card and the best card wins them all. If Hearts bored you, skip it.
7 Wonders Duel
Best when you want a real game, not a filler
- Built from the ground up for two, sharing only a name with the original
- Three ways to win, so a losing position is rarely hopeless
- Around 30 minutes once you both know it
Gives up: the first game is mostly rules-reading. It pays back after that.
Star Realms
Best if you want something to sink time into
- Deck-building duel — you build an engine and attack with it
- Cheap for how many hours it holds
- Expansions exist if it sticks, and are not needed if it does not
Gives up: games can end abruptly once one engine is clearly ahead.
Codenames Duet
Best cooperative game for two
- You are both giving and receiving clues, against the game rather than each other
- Works for couples who do not enjoy competing
- A campaign mode raises the difficulty as you get better together
Gives up: it leans on shared vocabulary, so it is less fun across a language gap.
Or play tonight with a standard deck
If you already own a deck, these cost nothing and several are better than the boxed games above. Where we have written the rules up, the heading links to them.
Gin Rummy
The default two-player card game for a reason. Draw, discard, and get your hand into groups (three or four of a kind, or three or more in a row) before the other person. Games are short and the skill ceiling is high.
Rummy
The plain rummy game, and the easiest way into Gin Rummy. With two players you each get ten cards, put groups of matching cards on the table, and race to get rid of every card.
Crazy Eights
Seven cards each when two play. Match the top card of the pile (an 8 can go on anything), and be first to empty your hand. Quick, and a good one to play with a child.
Cribbage
Widely held to be the best two-player game playable with a standard deck. It needs a board to score on, which is the only catch — and cribbage boards are cheap.
Speed
No turns, no thinking, both players going at once until someone is out of cards. Five minutes, and the best game on this page for playing with a child.
Double Solitaire
Two decks, two players, shared foundations, and a race. It turns a solitary game into an argument, in the good way. Learn ordinary Solitaire first.
Any of these need nothing more than a decent deck — see our deck picks if yours is past its best.
Learning the games
We write the rules up one game at a time, in full, on our rules pages. If a word on this page is unfamiliar, the glossary explains it.
The two-player games here are the easiest to learn by doing: you can play Gin Rummy, Rummy or Crazy Eights against the computer, or drill counting Cribbage hands in your browser, with a coach explaining each rule as it comes up. All the practice games.
If you would rather have a book on the shelf than a tab open, the rules pages end with four we recommend — one of them covers several hundred games, which is more than we will ever write up.