Fast, Plain-Language Rules for Classic Games

Somebody deals a hand, three turns in someone asks "wait, can you actually do that," and four people pull out four different phones with four different answers. That moment — not a lazy afternoon of casual reading — is who this site is built for. Every page here is written to be read in under a minute on a phone, mid-game, by someone who needs an answer now, not a publisher's 40-page rulebook PDF and not a wiki page written for people who already know the game.

Why another rules site

Search "cribbage rules" or "can you stack a draw four on a draw two in UNO" and you'll mostly find two kinds of pages: a scanned or lightly-reformatted publisher rulebook, dense with terminology and written for someone learning from scratch at a table with the actual components in front of them, or a thin ad-stuffed page that answers the headline question in one sentence and pads the rest with filler. Neither is built for the actual moment this site targets — a table that already knows roughly how to play and needs one specific thing confirmed fast.

Every game page on this site follows the same shape on purpose: setup (who deals, what each player starts with), the turn (what happens, in order, every round), scoring (exactly how points are counted, with real worked numbers), and the edge cases — the specific moments a real table stops and argues. That last section is the one almost no other rules site takes seriously, and it's the actual reason this site exists.

The one rule every page on this site actually follows

A rulebook's paragraph belongs to whoever published it. The rule itself — that a flush beats a straight, that a knock at ten or under is legal in gin rummy, that Free Parking pays out nothing in Monopoly's own printed rules no matter how many house tables disagree — belongs to nobody, because facts aren't the kind of thing copyright protects. That distinction is the entire reason this site is worth trusting: every page gets drafted from the confirmed facts, in whatever sentence actually explains the rule on a phone screen at a crowded table, never lifted or lightly reworded from a publisher's own wording. Classic card, dice and pen-and-paper games with no living rights-holder make up the core of the catalogue for exactly this reason — there's no ambiguity at all about how deeply they can be covered. Widely known commercial games are covered too, always as a fair, independent summary of how they're actually played, with no publisher logos, card art or board designs reproduced anywhere. See the methodology page for the actual verification steps, and the trademark disclaimer for the full legal notice on commercial game names.

The argument gets a real answer

Nearly every game people actually play at home has two or three moments where the table stops: does a flush beat a straight in this house's version of poker, can you go out on your very first turn in rummy, what happens when nobody can play in dominoes. Those exact moments get their own page under Settle an Argument, built around one habit this site holds to strictly: name the standard rule, then name whatever house-rule version your own table might actually be using, and never blur the two into one paragraph as though they carried equal weight. Nobody at the table has to guess whose phone is right, and nobody has to feel talked down to for having grown up on the house version.

Score sheets and tools that actually help mid-game

A printable score sheet beats a scrap of paper with someone's handwriting crossed out three times, and a phone-based scorekeeper beats losing count entirely. Every score sheet page explains how the scoring actually works before the sheet itself, and the tools section has a universal scorekeeper, rules-aware scorekeepers for Yahtzee-style dice games and cribbage specifically, a game picker for when nobody can decide, and a print-ready score sheet generator — all of it running entirely in your browser, saved on your own phone, with nothing sent anywhere.

Questions people still ask before they start

Do you cover house rules, or just the official rules? Both, and we're explicit about which is which. Every dispute page states the official ruling first, then names the common house-rule variants separately — a table can use whichever it prefers, but it won't be left thinking a house rule is the official one.

Is this site affiliated with any game publisher? No. Widely known commercial games are described as an independent, fair-use summary of how they're played — never with a publisher's logo, card art, or exact board design, and never implying endorsement. The disclaimer page has the full notice.

Why don't you have chess rules? Chess deserves — and gets — a dedicated, much deeper reference than a single rules page could ever be. Our sister site ChessShelf covers openings, tactics, strategy and endgames properly; we link to it rather than duplicate a thin version here.

What if my table plays a game slightly differently than what's on this page? That's normal — most classic games have real regional and family variation. Where a variant is common enough to be worth naming, the relevant dispute page names it as a labeled house rule. Where it isn't, the official ruling is still the fairest tie-breaker for a table that disagrees.

Do I need to download anything to use the scorekeepers? No. Every tool on this site runs entirely in your browser and saves its state on your own device — nothing is uploaded, and nothing requires an account or an app store.