Concentration
Also known as Memory, Pelmanism, Pairs, Match Match, Pexeso, Shinkei-suijaku
- Players
- 2-8 players (best with 3)
- Deck
- 1 standard deck (52 cards)
- Time
- 10-20 minutes
- Difficulty
- Simple
- Category
- Matching & collecting
Setup
Two or more can play, and the only real limit is the table everyone has to reach across and the patience of whoever is waiting for their next go. It suits young children particularly well, which is why it gets handed to them so often, but it is not only a children's game: played attentively it is hard work for an adult.
What you really need is a large flat surface, a table or the floor, because the layout is the game and a cramped one ruins it.
Shuffle a full 52-card pack thoroughly, then lay every card face down in four rows of thirteen. Leave a small gap on all sides of each card so that no card overlaps another and so that a card can be turned up and set back down in precisely the square it came from. A tidy grid is not decoration: everybody at the table is memorising positions, and a layout that drifts as it is played robs whoever has been paying the closest attention.
Settle what counts as a match before the first card is turned, because the published accounts do not agree on which rule is the ordinary one. This entry follows rank alone, so any two sixes go together and suit plays no part; one account gives that as the rule and rank-with-colour as the alternative, and the other gives it exactly the other way round. The stricter form is in the variants below. Neither is wrong, and a table that has not said which it means will find out halfway through.
Nothing obliges you to use all 52. For small children, take whole ranks out rather than odd cards, so that what is left still pairs off: the twos through the sevens alone give 24 cards in four rows of six. Choose a starting player however you like, and play moves to the left.
Play
On your turn, pick two cards from the layout and turn them face up where they lie, one after the other. Turn them so the whole table sees them rather than shielding them toward yourself; hiding a card you have exposed is the one thing that genuinely breaks the game, because everyone is entitled to the information a turn produces.
If the two cards match, take them, stack them in front of you, and turn two more. A run continues as long as you keep matching, so once the layout has been picked over a little a player who has been watching can clear several pairs on a single turn.
If they do not match, leave them face up long enough for everyone to have actually looked, then turn both back down without shifting them a hair from where they sat. The turn then passes to the left. The gaps left by cards that have been won stay open for the rest of the game: never close the layout up or slide the survivors together to tidy it, since the empty squares are part of what everyone is memorising. Watch for a grid that is being squared up, nudged or slid, whether or not anyone means anything by it, because a card's position is worth exactly as much as its rank.
Picking the first of your two cards is where the game is won, and the natural instinct is the wrong one. Reaching straight for the card you are surest of leaves you stranded when its partner turns out not to be where you thought, and it has just told the table where that card is. Turn something you have never seen instead. If it matches one of the cards you already know, go and take the match. If it matches nothing, take your second card from among the ones you already know anyway rather than exposing a second stranger: the pair is lost either way, and the only question left is how much you hand to the player after you. Two complete unknowns is right for the opening turn or two and essentially never again.
Play carries on round the table until the last card has been taken. Nobody can ever be stuck: any two face-down cards make a legal turn.
Goal & scoring
You are collecting pairs, and the player holding the most when the layout is empty wins. Matching by rank alone, a full pack yields 26 pairs, so two players can genuinely finish level at thirteen each. One account settles it outright — everybody tied for the most pairs wins together — and the other only notes that a tie for first place can happen. Neither calls for a play-off.
Count pairs rather than cards, and count at the end rather than as you go, so that nobody spends a turn totting up other people's stacks.
Once the cards are down, very little about the result is luck. The shuffle decides which blind turn happens to strike a pair, and that is the whole of it: every card is on the table and every card turned up is public, so the player who watches other people's turns as attentively as their own beats the one who only concentrates when it is their go. That is the reason this game gets handed to children so often. It rewards a single habit, and it rewards it immediately.
Variants
Rank and colour — A match must agree in rank and in colour, so the three of spades pairs only with the three of clubs, and the ace of hearts only with the ace of diamonds. Every card now has exactly one partner anywhere in the pack, which removes the accidental matches the rank-only game throws up and makes remembering a card precisely useful rather than approximately useful. One of the two published accounts gives this as the ordinary rule and rank alone as the variation, so it is worth asking which a new table means before the cards go down.
Two packs — Shuffle two 52-card packs together and lay all 104 out in eight rows of thirteen for a much longer and more punishing game. A pair now has to be identical, the same rank and the same suit, so the ten of clubs waits for the other ten of clubs and nothing else will do. The kindest form uses packs with different backs, shuffled separately and dealt into alternating positions like a chequerboard: because a card's partner is always in the other pack, a red-backed card can only ever be matched with a blue-backed one. That halves the number of candidates you have to hold in your head and makes an otherwise unmanageable layout playable.
Solitaire Concentration — Lay out the grid and play alone against your own record. Turn two cards at a time under the usual rules and keep count of how many turns you needed to clear the whole layout, or of how many turns failed to produce a pair. Fewer is better, and the running total is a surprisingly precise measure of how much attention you were actually paying.
One flip — Turning up a match wins you the pair but not another turn: play passes on either way. Runs disappear entirely, which stops the game turning on who happened to reach an already picked-over layout first, and it spreads the reward for a good memory evenly across the whole game instead of concentrating it in whoever gets the first long streak.
Fancy layouts — Nothing requires a rectangle. Circular, triangular and diamond-shaped layouts are all played and the dealer chooses; the loosest form scatters the cards across the floor and does not arrange them at all. They are harder than they look, because a grid gives every card an implicit row and column to hang the memory on, and an irregular shape takes that scaffolding away.
Rules checked against Pagat, Wikipedia, Gambiter, Game Rules, Classic Games and Puzzles, Card Game Database Wiki.