Cozy Classic
Free Crazy Eights
Ember Ridge Crazy Eights
Classic Crazy Eights for two, three or four, with the cards you may play lit up, a big suit picker for your eights, the suit to follow always on show, friendly computer players at three levels, and hints that explain.
What you do
Ember Ridge Crazy Eights is the classic shedding card game, played at a plank camp table on a pine ridge at dusk, under string lights, beside a canvas tent and a crackling campfire, with a plaid wool blanket for the cards, a camp lantern and enamel mugs of cocoa. Each player gets five cards (seven when only two play). On your turn you play one card that matches the top card of the discard pile by suit or by rank. Eights are wild: you can play one on anything and name the suit that comes next. If nothing fits, you draw from the stock until something does. The first player to play their last card wins the hand and scores the cards left in everyone else’s hands, 50 for every eight caught. The game goes to 50 points a player, 200 at a table of four. You play with up to three friends: Nutmeg the chipmunk, quick and excitable in her green scarf; Hugo the bear, calm and kind in his buffalo-check flannel and mustard beanie; and Mortimer the marmot, who wears a quilted vest and a bobble hat, keeps a pencil handy and likes to say he counted.
- Three levels for your friends: Gentle plays the first card it finds that fits and often any card at all, Steady keeps its eights, stays in its longest suit and sheds high cards when someone is nearly out, and Sharp also notes who drew on which suit and steers play toward a suit a player close to going out seems to lack.
- Play against one, two or three friends. Two players get seven cards each and three or four players get five, as the published rules say.
- On your turn the cards you may play stand out and the others dim, and a card you cannot play says why. A badge beside the pile always shows the suit to follow, in big print after an eight.
- Play an eight and a suit picker rises over the bottom of the table, in reach of your thumb, with four big buttons that show how many of each suit you hold.
- Standard rules by default: draw until you can play, pass only when the stock is empty, and a game to 50 points a player. Settings offer drawing one card, single hands, and three house rules that are off unless you turn them on: twos draw two, queens skip and aces reverse.
- Hints that use only what you can see at the table, hand sorting by suit or by rank with the eights at the end, and an undo that takes back the card you just played until someone else plays.
How to play
- Press Play. With three friends, everyone gets five cards. Yours sit along the bottom, sorted by suit with the eights at the end. Nutmeg sits on your left, Hugo across the table and Mortimer on your right, each holding a fan of face-down cards.
- The rest of the deck is the stock, face down in the middle, and its top card is turned up to start the discard pile. An eight turned up is buried in the stock and the next card is turned instead. Play starts on the dealer’s left and goes clockwise.
- On your turn, play one card that matches the top card of the pile by suit or by rank. On a 7 of hearts you may play any heart or any 7. Tap a card to pick it up and tap it again to play it.
- Eights are wild. Play an eight on anything, then pick the suit the next player must follow. They must play that suit or another eight.
- If nothing fits, tap the stock. By default you keep drawing until a card fits, then play it. You may draw even when you could play. When the stock is empty and nothing fits, you pass. If nobody can play, the hand is blocked and the lowest hand wins it.
- The first player to play their last card wins the hand and scores the cards left in the other hands: 50 for each eight, 10 for each king, queen, jack and ten, 1 for each ace and face value for the rest. The first to 200 at a table of four (150 for three, 100 for two) wins the game.
Controls
- Touch or mouse: tap a card to pick it up and tap it again to play it, or switch to playing on one tap in Settings. Tap the stock to draw, and tap a suit on the picker after an eight. Pass, Keep it, Next hand and Scores appear beside your name plate when they apply. Undo, Hint, the sort button (it reads By suit or By rank) and Menu sit on a wooden board below the table on a phone held upright, and at the lower left beside the table on wider screens.
- Keyboard: the arrow keys move along your hand and Enter or Space picks or plays the card in focus. D draws, P passes, N deals the next hand, U undoes, H shows a hint, S sorts your hand and Escape clears a pick. On the suit picker, C, D, S and H (or 1 to 4) name clubs, diamonds, spades or hearts.
- Restart in the toolbar starts a new game. Menu starts a new game, changes your friends’ level, how many friends play, the scoring, the drawing rule, the house rules, how you play a card and your friends’ speed in Settings, and shows your statistics and the rules. The toolbar also has pause, help, optional sound and fullscreen.
Tips worth knowing
- Keep your eights. An eight goes on anything, so it is your way out when nothing else fits, and it costs you 50 points if someone else goes out while you still hold it.
- When you play an eight, name the suit you hold the most of, so you are likely to have a card for it on your next turn.
- Use a matching rank to change suit. On the 9 of clubs, a 9 of hearts moves play into hearts without spending an eight.
- Watch the draws. A player who draws on spades probably has no spades, so keeping play in spades can hold them up.
- Shed high cards when someone is nearly out. Tens and court cards are worth 10 each to whoever goes out first.
- Use the hint to learn. It looks only at the cards you can see and the draws and passes everyone made, and says why.
Accessibility
- Everything can be played with a keyboard: the arrow keys move a visible focus along your hand, Enter or Space picks and plays, single letter keys draw, pass, deal the next hand, undo, hint and sort, and the suit picker takes C, D, S and H.
- Every card in your hand is labeled for screen readers with its name and whether it can be played now, and why not when it cannot. The name plates read out each player’s cards left and score, and the suit badge reads out the suit to follow.
- The cards you may play are marked by an outline as well as by dimming the others, the suit to follow is shown by name as well as by its mark, and every score is shown as a number.
- Nothing is timed. Your friends wait while a menu or the suit picker is open, and their speed can be set to Relaxed.
- Reduced motion places the cards at once instead of dealing and sliding them, stops the friends’ fidgeting and keeps the sparkles small. Sound is optional and never needed to play.
Questions
How strong is each level?
We measured the levels with our own simulation of 1,000 games to 200 for each pairing, one player against three of another at a table of four, with the seats and the first dealer moving round the table. An even match wins about one game in four. Against three players that play a legal card at random, Gentle won 320 of 1,000 games, Steady 419 and Sharp 429. One Steady player beat three Gentle players in 357 games (35.7 percent) and one Sharp player beat three Gentle in 384 (38.4 percent). One Sharp player beat three Steady in 266 games (26.6 percent). Crazy Eights has a lot of luck in the deal and the draw, so the gaps between levels are smaller than in Hearts or checkers. These are computer players, not people, so treat the numbers as a guide.
Can a beginner beat Gentle?
Yes, that is what Gentle is for. In the same simulation, a simple scripted beginner that plays the first card that fits, keeps its eights until nothing else fits, names the suit it holds most of and draws only when it must, won 292 of 1,000 games against three Gentle players (29.2 percent, more than an even share). It won 228 against three Steady players and 221 against three Sharp. Head to head against one friend, the same beginner won 609 of 1,000 games against Gentle, 379 against Steady and 310 against Sharp.
Which Crazy Eights rules does this use?
The common published rules: one 52-card deck, seven cards each for two players and five for three or four, a turned-up eight buried in the stock, match the top card by suit or rank, eights wild with a named suit, draw until you can play, pass when the stock is empty, and the first player out scoring the cards left in the other hands (eights 50, kings, queens, jacks and tens 10, aces 1, the rest face value) in a game to 50 points a player. Families differ, so Settings offers drawing just one card, single hands with no score, and three house rules from Pagat’s rules page: twos make the next player draw two, queens skip a turn, and aces reverse the direction of play.
What happens when the stock runs out?
Play goes on without drawing. A player who has no card that fits passes. If every player passes in turn, the hand is blocked: the player whose cards are worth the least wins it and scores the difference between their hand and each other hand. Blocked hands are rare at a table of four, about 3 to 5 in every 100 hands in our simulation, and more common with two players.
What can I undo?
Undo takes back the card you just played, as long as nobody has played since, so no new card has been seen. A draw is final, because you have seen the card, and so is a pass. Once the next player acts, your card stands.
Do Nutmeg, Hugo and Mortimer look at my cards?
No. Each friend chooses from what a player at the table could see: their own cards, the discard pile, how many cards each player and the stock hold, who played, drew or passed on which card, and the scores. The hints follow the same rule. Our regressions check this by shuffling every hidden card and confirming every choice and hint stays the same.
What does the game save?
Every card played and every card drawn is saved as it happens, along with your settings and your statistics for each level, so you can close the page mid-hand and pick up at the same camp table later. It is all kept in this browser’s local storage, and there is no account.
