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Golf card game rules

In Golf, each player has six cards face down in two rows of three, and the goal is the lowest score. On your turn you take a card from the deck or the discard pile and swap it for one of your six. Two equal cards in the same column score zero. A game is nine deals, called holes, and the lowest total wins.

By Emre Özen, updated October 8, 2026. These are the rules our online Golf card game uses. They follow the six-card Golf rules on pagat.com and Bicycle's six-card Golf rules, which agree on almost everything below. Where only one of them states a rule, we say so.

This page is about the multiplayer card game, often called 6-card Golf. Golf solitaire is a different game for one player with the same name.

What you need

Two to four players and one ordinary 52-card deck, no jokers. Pagat.com says to add a second deck when more than four play (and a third above eight). You'll also want a pencil and a Golf score sheet, because scores add up over nine holes.

The deal

The dealer shuffles and deals six cards face down to each player, one at a time.
Each player lays their six cards face down in two rows of three, without looking at them. This is your layout.
The rest of the deck goes face down in the middle as the stock. The dealer turns its top card face up beside it to start the discard pile.
Before play begins, every player turns any two of their six cards face up. The other four stay face down, and you aren't allowed to peek at them.

Deal and play go clockwise, so the player to the dealer's left takes the first turn. Neither source says who deals the next hole. In our game the deal passes to the left each hole, so the first turn moves around the table.

Your turn

Every turn has two parts: take one card, then use it or get rid of it.

If you take...	You can	You can't
the top card of the stock (you see it, nobody else does)	swap it for any one of your six cards, face up or face down, or put it straight on the discard pile	keep it in your hand for later
the top card of the discard pile	swap it for any one of your six cards	put it back on the discard pile unused (this one is pagat's rule)

When you swap, the new card goes into your layout face up, and the card it replaces goes face up on top of the discard pile. If you replace a face-down card, you don't get to look at it first. It's turned over as it goes onto the pile, so everyone finds out what it was at the same moment.

That's the whole turn. You never move cards around inside your layout, and a face-up card never turns back over.

How a hole ends

A hole ends when one player has all six cards face up. That's called going out. What happens next is the one rule people play two ways:

The main rule on pagat.com, and the one Bicycle prints: play stops as soon as the sixth card is face up.
One more turn for everyone else. Pagat.com says many people play this way, and it's what our game does unless you switch it off in Settings. After a player goes out, each other player takes one last turn, and then the hole is over.

Then everyone turns all their cards face up and scores the hole.

Scoring a hole

Score each column of two cards on its own, then add the three columns. This is the scoring table from pagat.com and Bicycle, and the only one our game uses.

Card	Points
Ace	1
Two	minus 2
Three to ten	face value (3 to 10)
Jack or queen	10
King	0
Two equal cards in the same column	0 for the column, even a pair of twos

Equal means the same rank: two 7s, two jacks. A jack and a queen are both worth 10, but they aren't a pair. Only columns count, so two 7s side by side in the same row score 14.

A worked example

Say your layout ends like this:

	Left	Middle	Right
Top row	Queen	2	King
Bottom row	Queen	6	Ace
Column score	0 (a pair)	4 (minus 2 plus 6)	1 (0 plus 1)

That hole is worth 5. The two queens would cost you 20 apart, but in one column they cost nothing.

A few numbers worth knowing, which we worked out from the scoring table. The best possible hole is minus 6: a 2 and a king in all three columns. The worst is 60: two different 10-point cards in every column. With a full deck, a random face-down card is worth about 5.5 points on average.

Winning

Write down every player's score after each hole. After nine holes, the lowest total wins. Some groups play 18 holes instead, which pagat.com lists as a variation, and our game offers both. If two players tie for the lowest total, our game counts it as a shared win.

What the rules don't say

Neither source covers a stock that runs out. It can happen when players keep throwing cards away instead of using them. Our game shuffles the discard pile, all but its top card, into a new stock and carries on. That's a common fix in draw-and-discard games, so agree on it before you start if you're playing at home.

Words you'll hear

Hole: One deal, played until someone goes out and then scored. Nine holes make a game, like a round of golf.
Layout: Your six cards in two rows of three.
Stock: The face-down pile you draw from. Also called the deck.
Discard pile: The face-up pile next to the stock. Only its top card can be taken.
Going out: Turning up your last face-down card, which ends the hole.
Column pair: Two cards of the same rank, one above the other. The column scores 0.

Common variations

All of these are listed on pagat.com. Agree on them before the first deal.

The last turn after someone goes out: played or not, as above.
The first two cards: some groups say they must be in the same column, or must not be, or must be one middle card and one end card. Others turn no cards up at the start, and each player looks once at the row of three nearest them instead.
Turning a card instead of drawing: some let you spend your turn turning one face-down card up. Some make you turn one up whenever you throw away a card from the stock, unless it's your last face-down card.
Going out in one go: some let you end the hole on your turn by turning all your face-down cards up at once.
Jokers: some add two jokers per deck. Twos are then worth plus 2, and jokers minus 2 (other groups score jokers at minus 5, minus 3 or zero).
Two decks for fewer players: some use two decks even with two to four players.
Bonuses: some score minus 10 for four equal cards in two columns, or minus 20 for four equal cards together in a square block. With two decks, some give minus 20 for six equal cards.
Length: 18 holes instead of nine.

Pagat.com also describes four-card, eight-card, nine-card and ten-card Golf, and names Polish Polka as another name for the game. The six-card game on this page is the one Bicycle's rules describe.

Ready to try it? Play Golf against the computer or send a friend a link, and read our Golf card game strategy for what to keep and what to throw.

Sources

John McLeod, "Golf", pagat.com (six-card Golf rules, variations, and the four-, eight-, nine- and ten-card games). Page last updated July 1, 2026.
"Six Card Golf", Bicycle Playing Cards, bicyclecards.com (players, deal, turn, scoring and nine holes).