How to Play Nertz: Rules for the Fast Solitaire Race

Picture a table where everyone plays solitaire at once, nobody takes turns, and every card you get into the middle is a point your rivals didn’t get. That is the Nertz card game. Each player races to empty a 13-card pile, while everybody builds on the same shared foundations. Here are the full Nertz rules, from the deal to scoring, plus variations and strategy.

What the Nertz card game is

The Nertz card game is a competitive form of patience. The building rules look like ordinary one-player solitaire, but every player has a layout of their own and everyone plays at the same time. There are no turns, which makes a round loud and chaotic in the best way.

The game goes by many names. According to Wikipedia’s Nerts article, it is called Racing Demon in the UK, and in the US it was called Pounce in the 1930s and Nerts later on. The card game historian David Parlett places its origin in England in the 1890s. American accounts under the name Pounce appear from 1934.

What you need

Every player needs a full 52-card deck, and every deck needs a different back design or color. At the end of each hand, the cards in the middle are sorted by their backs to work out who played what, and the score depends on it.

Nertz plays well with two people and gets livelier with three or four. Wikipedia gives two to eight players as the ideal range. Bigger groups can play in pairs, with two partners sharing one deck and one layout. You also need a big table and pen and paper for the running scores.

The deal

Each player shuffles their own deck and lays out their own cards:

• The Nertz pile: 13 cards in a stack, with the top card face up. This is the pile you are racing to get rid of.
• Four work piles: four cards dealt face up in a row, each starting its own pile.
• The stock: the remaining 35 cards, held or placed face down.
• The waste pile: empty at the start. Cards you turn from the stock land here.

The middle of the table stays clear for the foundations, which everyone shares. Some players call that area the lake and their work piles the river. When everyone is ready, someone calls “go” and all players start at once.

How to play Nertz

Here are the core Nertz rules. Everyone plays at the same time, as fast as they like, and only within their own layout and the shared middle. You may never touch another player’s cards. The usual rule is to move cards with one hand only, although the other hand can hold your stock.

Building the foundations

Any Ace can be played to the middle to start a new foundation. From there, the foundation is built up one rank at a time in the same suit: Ace, 2, 3 and so on up to the King. Any player can add to any foundation, including one somebody else started. A finished foundation is turned over and set aside.

You can play three kinds of card to a foundation: the top card of your Nertz pile, the top card of your waste pile, and the exposed card at the end of any of your work piles. If two cards land on the same foundation at once, the first one stays.

Building on your work piles

Your four work piles are built down in alternating colors, so a red 6 goes on a black 7, then a black 5 on the red 6. You can move a card together with all the cards on top of it to another work pile, as long as the bottom card of the group fits. Only the last card of each work pile can go to a foundation.

When a work pile is empty, you can fill it with the top card of your Nertz pile, the top card of your waste pile, or a card (with anything on top of it) from another work pile.

Working the Nertz pile

The top card of your Nertz pile can go to a foundation, onto a work pile it fits, or into an empty work pile space.

Turning the stock

Turn your stock three cards at a time onto the waste pile, keeping them in order, so only the third card shows. You may play that top waste card to a foundation or a work pile, which uncovers the card below it. When only one or two cards are left in the stock, turn them over as well. When the stock is empty, turn the waste pile over to make a new stock and keep going.

When everybody is stuck

Sometimes nobody can move. In that case, everyone gathers their waste pile back into their stock and moves the top card of the stock to the bottom. That shifts which cards come up in each group of three, and play restarts.

If you are stuck but others can still play, you wait. The reset happens only when every player is stuck, or when everyone agrees to it. If the game stays blocked for good, the hand can end without anyone going out.

Ending the hand and calling “Nertz”

As soon as your Nertz pile is empty, you can shout “Nertz” (or “Pounce”), and all play stops at once. Cards already in motion may finish their move, but nothing else is played. You don’t have to call it the instant your pile empties, though someone else might call first.

Nertz scoring

Scoring is simple, and it is what makes the game more than a pure speed contest:

What you have	Points
Each of your cards on the foundations	+1
Each card left in your Nertz pile	−2

Say you got 14 cards into the middle and still have 3 in your Nertz pile when someone calls Nertz. Your hand scores 14 − 6 = 8. The caller, with 11 cards in the middle and an empty pile, scores 11.

Hand scores can be negative, and so can running totals. Scores carry over from hand to hand, and the first player to reach the agreed target, usually 100, wins. If two players pass the target in the same hand, the higher total wins.

Common variations

House rules are everywhere. Agree on these before the first deal:

• Bonus for going out: Wikipedia notes that a 10-point bonus for the player who calls Nertz is fairly common. Some groups give more.
• Smaller penalty: some players deduct only 1 point per card left in the Nertz pile.
• Shorter Nertz pile: using 11 or 12 cards instead of 13 makes hands quicker.
• Turning one card at a time: this makes the stock easier to work.
• Sliding under: some rule sets let you slip a card under a work pile into an empty space, if it is one rank higher and the opposite color of that pile’s bottom card.
• Jokers: two jokers per deck as wild cards, each declared as a specific card when played.

The Pounce card game described in 1934 already had the same shape: a 13-card pounce pile, four cards beside it, a stock taken three at a time, and a 10-point bonus for the player who pounced.

Strategy tips

Watch your Nertz pile first. Each card in it costs 2 points, so a card cleared from your Nertz pile is worth more than a card played from the waste.

Keep a space open. An empty work pile is a free landing spot for a Nertz card. Don’t fill it with a waste card unless that card unlocks something better.

Play low cards fast. Aces and 2s get grabbed by everyone. The sooner you play yours, the more foundation points you collect before the others close those piles out.

Keep the stock moving. When you can’t see a play, turn three more. The foundations change constantly, so a card that was useless a second ago may fit now.

Play Nertz online

The quickest way to learn the rhythm is to play a few hands of the Nertz card game. Our free Nertz game runs in your browser against one, two or three computer players, each with their own colored deck, so you can see whose cards are in the middle. You can set the rivals to Easy, Medium or Hard and play to 100, 50 or 25 points, and when everyone is stuck, the game runs the reset described above.

If you like the no-turns chaos but want something simpler, try Speed, a two-player race to empty your hand onto two center piles.

Frequently asked questions

How many cards are in a Nertz pile?

Thirteen. Twelve are face down with the 13th face up on top, and you turn the next card face up each time you play the top one. Some house rules use 11 or 12 cards for faster hands.

Is Nertz the same as Pounce?

Yes. Pounce is an older American name for the same game, and Racing Demon is the usual name in Britain.

How do you score in Nertz?

Every card of yours on the foundations scores 1 point. Every card left in your Nertz pile costs 2 points. Games are usually played to 100.

Can you play on another player’s foundation in Nertz?

Yes. All foundations are shared, so you can add the next card in the suit to any foundation, whoever started it. You can never touch another player’s Nertz pile, work piles or stock.

Conclusion

Nertz turns quiet solitaire into a race around a shared table. Learn the layout, the shared foundations and the plus-one, minus-two scoring, and you’re ready to play. Grab a deck for everyone, or play Nertz online against the computer. For a quick break between hands, the Chrome Dino game is waiting on our homepage.