Go Fish
The first card game most people learn — and one with far more skill in it than it lets on. Two to four players, a fast pairs preset and a daily deal. Free, private and running entirely in your browser.
Every ask is made out loud. Asking tells the table you hold that rank; a go fish tells the table that player does not. The memory panel keeps both.
How to play
Heads-up you are dealt seven cards each; at three or four players it is five each, because dealing seven to four players would put over half the pack in hands before anybody had asked a question. The rest is the pond.
On your turn, ask one player for one rank — and you must already hold a card of it. If they have any they hand over every one, and you ask again. If they have none they say go fish, you draw a card from the pond, and the turn passes.
Four of a rank is a book. It goes face up in front of you and is out of the game. When every book is laid, the most books wins — and it can be a tie, which this page says plainly rather than inventing a tie-break.
The part nobody is taught
Go Fish is usually played as a guessing game, and played that way it is one. But nothing in it is secret except the cards themselves: every question and every answer happens in front of everybody, and each one is worth remembering.
- An ask is a confession. You cannot ask for a rank you do not hold, so asking tells everyone at the table that you hold one. Ask for sevens when nobody has mentioned sevens all game and you have handed three opponents a free fact for a guess.
- A go fish is a fact. That player has no cards of that rank — and they still have none until they draw or are given some, which is public too.
- So the best ask is rarely your biggest set. It is the rank somebody has already told you they hold.
- Down to one card is the loudest tell on the table. A player holding a single card holds exactly one rank, and everybody has heard which ranks they have asked for.
The What the table knows panel keeps all of it for you, for every player and every rank, built from the public log alone. It can be switched off once you no longer need it.
Which Go Fish this is
Go Fish has more house variants than any other game here. These are Zerdly’s choices, and what the common alternative would be.
- A hit gives you another go. Some families pass the turn after every ask. Without the extra turn, tracking who holds what buys you almost nothing.
- Fishing the card you asked for does not. A common house rule gives another turn when the pond hands you the exact rank. It rewards the one part of the turn nobody controls.
- An empty hand is not out. You draw one card on your turn and carry on; you sit out only when the pond is empty too, and your books still count.
- You may ask anybody, not only your neighbour.
Tables
- Two players
- You and one opponent, seven cards each. The gentlest table — and the one where remembering matters least, because there is only one person whose answers you can learn from.
- Three players
- Five cards each and two opponents, so every question you hear teaches you something about somebody. This is where paying attention starts to pay.
- Four players
- A full table. Three opponents asking each other questions is a great deal of free information — and three opponents hearing yours.
- Fast pairs
- Two of a rank makes a book instead of four, so there are twenty-six to take and they come thick and fast. A different game rather than a shorter one: a rank can be booked twice, and stays in play until it has been.
- Daily deal
- Three players, the ordinary rules, and the same cards for everybody today.
The opponents
The three levels differ in how much they remember and almost nothing else. All three read the same public log; the weakest reads only the last few events of it, the strongest reads all of it. None of them ever sees a card in anybody’s hand.
- Casual
- Plays along happily and remembers only the last few things anybody said, so it will cheerfully ask you again for a rank you told it you did not have.
- Steady
- Keeps the last twenty turns of the table in its head — enough to remember who asked for what recently, not enough to have tracked the whole game.
- Sharp
- Remembers every ask, every hand-over and every go fish since the deal, and works out from them who must be holding what.
Against a reference player that asks a legal question at random, and with every deal played from every chair in turn, the strongest level takes about 130% of its fair share of wins heads-up, 240% at three players and 345% at four — memory is worth more the more people there are to remember. Two copies of the reference player come out level, which is how those numbers are known to mean anything. The ladder holds at every table size and in the pairs preset too.
Privacy and local play
Your hand, your settings and your record are stored on this device and nowhere else. There is no account, no sign-in and no gameplay request to any server. The reset button clears this game’s data and leaves every other Zerdly tool alone.
Questions
- Is Go Fish not just luck?
- Much less than it looks. Every ask is public and it hands the table two facts that stay true: the asker holds that rank, and — if the answer is go fish — the asked player does not. A player who tracks those wins far more than one who does not, and the measurements here bear it out: the same bot with full recall takes about two and a half times its fair share of wins against one that asks at random.
- What is the memory panel showing me?
- What the table can be certain of about each opponent, for every rank: a tick if they are known to hold it, a cross if they are known not to, and a dash if nobody has said. It is built from the asks and answers alone, by exactly the same function the computer players use. It is not a cheat sheet — it shows you nothing they do not already have, it just writes it down.
- Can I turn the memory panel off?
- Yes, in The table settings. It is on by default because it is the point of the route, but a player who wants to keep it in their head can. The opponents are unaffected either way — their memory is set by the difficulty level, not by yours.
- Do I get another turn when somebody gives me cards?
- Yes. A successful ask means you ask again, and you keep going until somebody says go fish. That is the rule Zerdly uses, and it is the one that makes the game worth playing: without it, tracking who holds what buys you almost nothing.
- If I fish the card I asked for, do I go again?
- No. Some families give another turn when the pond hands you the exact rank you asked for. It rewards the one part of the turn nobody controls, so it is off here.
- I ran out of cards. Am I out of the game?
- No. You draw one card from the pond on your turn and carry on with it. Only when the pond is empty as well do you sit out — and your books still count, so you can still win from there. Some house rules put an empty-handed player out; that would end games early and throw away books still in hands.
- Why did the game not end when the pond ran dry?
- Because there are usually several books still sitting in hands at that moment, and stopping there would throw them away. Play continues — asks still work, misses simply pass the turn — until every book is laid or nobody has a card left.
- What is the fast pairs preset?
- A book is two cards instead of four, so there are twenty-six of them and they come thick and fast. It is a different game rather than a shorter one: a rank can be booked twice, so it stays in play after the first book with two of it still out there. Records are kept separately from the standard game.
- Can the computer see my cards?
- No. It is given one player's view of the table, and that object has no field for another hand — not a hidden one, not a redacted one. What it gets is its own hand, everybody's card counts, the face-up books and the public log of asks and answers, which is exactly what you can see. The event recording a draw says who drew, never what.
- Is anything sent to a server?
- No. The rules, the shuffle, the opponents, the sounds and your saved game all run in your browser. There is no account, and clearing this game's data leaves every other Zerdly tool untouched.