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Golf card game strategy

Grab every king, two and ace you see, and take a 3 off the discard pile most of the time. Leave anything from 5 up on the pile unless it pairs a card in your layout. Put high cards where they can make a column pair, never put two twos in the same column, and only go out when you're sure you're ahead on the hole.

By Emre Özen, updated October 8, 2026. The numbers come from the scoring table and from 2,000 nine-hole games between two copies of our strong computer player. New to the game? Start with the Golf card game rules.

Know what a face-down card is worth

Every decision in Golf compares a card you can see with one you can't. So it helps to know the average. Add up the 13 ranks with the Golf scoring table (ace 1, two minus 2, three to ten face value, jack and queen 10, king 0) and divide by 13: a random card is worth about 5.5 points.

That's the line. A card worth less than about 5 is an upgrade over a face-down card, on average. A card worth more is a downgrade, unless it makes a pair. The average moves as cards come out: if you've seen three kings and all four twos go by, the cards still out there are worth more, and a 5 starts looking good. Our strong computer player recounts it every turn, and the hint button tells you the current figure.

Two more numbers from the deck. Two random cards land in the same column as a pair only 5.9% of the time, so a dealt layout of six face-down cards averages about 31 points. Strong play gets that down to about 6.1 a hole.

Which discards to take

The top of the discard pile is the only card you get to see before you choose it. Here's how often our strong player took it, by rank, across 2,000 games against itself. The rest of the time it drew from the deck.

Top discardStrong player took it
Two (minus 2)100%
King (0)100%
Ace (1)98%
Three67%
Four31%
Five13%
Six4%
Seven2%
Ten2%
Queen2%

The pattern is simple. Kings, twos and aces get taken almost every time. A 3 is taken about two times in three, a 4 about one in three, a 5 rarely. From 6 up it almost never takes the card. A high card is only worth taking when it pairs a card you already have face up.

Pairs: the move that saves the most

A column pair scores 0, so the bigger the cards, the more a pair saves. Two queens apart cost 20 points. Stacked in one column, nothing. That's the only way a high card ever helps you.

  1. Leave room for pairs. When you turn up a high card early, the face-down card under or over it is the spot for its partner. Try not to fill that spot with something else.
  2. Don't pair twos. Two twos in one column score 0, but split across two columns they're worth minus 2 each. Pagat.com and Bicycle both spell this out.
  3. Kings don't need a pair. A king scores 0 alone, so a pair of kings saves nothing. Put a king anywhere.
  4. Count what's gone. If you have a face-up 9 and two other 9s are in the discard pile, only one 9 is left that you haven't seen. That 9 is a good card to replace.

Strong players in our test games finished a hole with about 1.0 column pair per layout.

Watch the next player

Whatever you throw on the discard pile, the next player sees first. If they have a face-up 8 with a face-down card under it, don't hand them an 8. Throw a card they can't use, even if it costs you a point. Our strong player weighs this on every discard.

When to go out

Going out ends the hole for everyone, so it's a weapon. With the last-turn rule, the player who went out had the lowest score on the hole 82% of the time in our two-player games. Without it, when the hole stops the moment someone's sixth card is face up, that rose to 90%.

How scores usually look

What we measured (strong vs strong)Result
Average score per hole, two players6.1
Average nine-hole total, two players55
Holes scored 0 or less20%
Holes scored 20 or more5%
Turns in a hole, both players together16
Average score per hole, four players8.4
Average score per hole, two players, no last turn8.1
Strong computer's wins against the easy one1,951 of 2,000 games

Scores run higher with four players. Our guess at why: with three others at the table, it's more likely someone gets a good layout early and goes out while you still have cards face down. In two-player games, the player who played first on the first hole won 51% of games, so there's no real edge in going first.

Method: 2,000 nine-hole games between two copies of our strong player, 1,000 more without the last turn, 500 four-player games, and 2,000 games of strong against easy (strong averaged 29.3 points a game, easy 80.2), October 2026. Each game had its own shuffled deck. Computer players aren't people, so treat these as one careful benchmark, not a law of the game.

Practice with hints

The quickest way to learn is to play and check. In our free Golf card game, the Hint button shows what the strong computer would do on your turn, with the reason, such as "It pairs the 9 of clubs in that column" or "The cards you haven't seen average 5.4 points." You get 6 hints per game, and the end of every hole lists each player's columns line by line, so you can see where the points came from.

Sources

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