Product · rules
How to play Declare
Declare is a low-hand card game: the lowest hand wins. On your turn you throw cards and pick up one, or you declare when your total is strictly under the table’s limit. If anyone ties or beats you when you declare, you take everyone’s points. This page sets out every rule in plain words.
The idea, and the rules in brief
Lowest hand wins. You are trying to get your hand under the table’s declare limit, and to say so before anyone else does.
The table sets the limit when it is created, at five, seven or ten. A match is a series of rounds, and the lowest total score at the end wins.
| Goal | Get your hand under the table’s limit and declare before anyone can beat you. |
|---|---|
| Card values | An ace is one point, two to ten are face value, jack, queen and king are ten each, and the joker’s rank is zero. Card values in detail |
| The joker | The dealer picks one of two face-up cards, blind. How the joker works |
| Your turn | Throw every card of one rank, then pick up one card. Or declare. A turn in detail |
| Declaring | Only when your total is strictly under the table’s limit. When you may declare |
| Scoring | Strictly lowest, you score zero and the others add their hands. Otherwise you add up everyone’s hands. Scoring and a worked example |
| Winning | The lowest total after the last round. Ties share the win. Winning the match |
Prefer to watch? The how-to-play video on YouTube. It uses a synthetic voice, and the footage was recorded in test windows.
Card values
An ace is worth one point. The cards from two to ten are worth their face value. Jack, queen and king are worth ten points each.
Any card of the joker’s rank is worth zero, in all four suits.
The joker, picked by the dealer
At the start of each round two cards are turned face up. The dealer picks one of them, blind: before looking at their own hand. The rank of that card is the joker for the whole round, worth zero in all four suits.
The dealer is the player sitting just before whoever starts the round, and the deal moves on one seat every round.
The card the dealer picked is set aside, face up, and is out of play for the round: it is never in a hand, on a pile or shuffled back in. The other face-up card starts the pile of thrown cards. Whoever starts then takes the opening turn.
Your turn
On your turn you do one of two things: throw and then pick up, or declare. Never both, and never neither.
After a throw you always take back exactly one card, so hands get smaller as the round goes on. A hand never grows.
Throwing pairs and sets
Choose one card from your hand to throw. Every card of that same rank in your hand goes with it, as one group.
If you throw a five while holding three fives, all three go together. You cannot throw only some of them: the whole rank goes.
Picking up
After you throw, take exactly one card. You can take the next card from the face-down draw pile, or any one card from the latest thrown group, the one the player before you threw. On the opening turn of a round, that is the single face-up card that was not made the joker.
Only the latest group can be picked from. Everything underneath it is dead. You can never pick back a card you just threw.
Declaring
You may declare only if your hand total is strictly below the table’s declare limit. Declaring replaces your throw and pick-up for that turn, and it ends the round at once.
Everyone’s cards are turned over, with their totals, before the result is shown.
If any other player ties your total or has a lower one, you lose, and you take everyone’s points.
Scoring
A good declare
Your total is strictly lower than everyone else’s, on its own. You score zero, and everyone else adds their own hand total to their running score.
A bad declare
Someone else’s total is lower than or equal to yours, including an exact tie. You add up everyone’s hand totals, your own included, to your running score, and everyone else adds zero.
A worked example
Alex’s hand totals six, Blake declares on a total of seven, and Casey’s hand totals nineteen.
Blake is not strictly lowest, because Alex’s six beats seven, so this is a bad declare. Blake adds six plus seven plus nineteen, which is thirty-two, to their score. Alex and Casey add zero.
Winning the match
The table chooses how long the match lasts. With fixed rounds, the table agrees a number of rounds up front, and the match ends after the last one. With unlimited rounds, rounds continue until every player still at the table agrees to stop.
In both cases the lowest running score wins. If two or more players tie on the lowest total, they are joint winners. There is no tie-break round.
Play Declare
Ready to try it? Open Declare on Google Play or in your browser. A practice match against bots needs no friends and no connection.