Spit
Also known as Slam
- Players
- 2 players
- Deck
- 1 standard deck (52 cards), jokers removed
- Time
- 10-25 minutes
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Category
- Shedding
Setup
Spit is for exactly two players and uses a full 52-card deck with the jokers taken out. Shuffle and deal 26 cards to each player. From here you each build your own side of the table independently, and it is worth doing this at the same time so neither player gets a head start.
Out of your 26 cards, lay a row of five stock piles in front of you, face down, containing 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 cards from left to right. That is 15 cards. Turn the top card of each of the five piles face up, so you have five face-up cards showing in a row.
The 11 cards you have not used stay squared up face down beside your row. These are your spit cards, your reserve. You are not allowed to look at them.
Leave a gap between the two rows, in the middle of the table, with room for two piles. Nothing goes there yet; the two centre piles are created by the first spit rather than dealt.
The layout mirrors on both sides of the table, so each player can see the other's five face-up cards throughout. That visibility is the point: you can watch what your opponent is about to need and take it first.
Play
When both players say they are ready, you both call spit together and each of you turns the top card of your reserve face up into the middle, side by side. Those two cards start the two centre piles, and play begins the moment they land.
There are no turns and no waiting: you both go flat out. Both centre piles belong to both of you: either player may add to either pile at any moment, and the only thing that attaches a pile to a player is which one they spit onto. For a card to go down, its rank has to sit immediately beside the rank showing on that pile, one step up or one step down, and suits play no part whatsoever. The sequence closes into a loop at the ace, so an ace covers a king or a 2 and a king or a 2 covers an ace, but that join is the only shortcut and you can never jump from a 2 straight to a king. Concretely, on a pile showing a 6 you may place a 5 or a 7 and nothing else.
You may only play the face-up card on top of one of your five stock piles, never anything buried and never a card from the other end of your row that happens to be visible. As soon as you move a face-up card, turn up whatever was underneath it so that pile is live again. Move one card at a time and use a single hand to do it; sliding two cards down together is not a legal play. A card is played the moment it makes contact with the pile. There is no taking it back, and your opponent may build on it the moment it lands. That settles races for the same pile by itself: whoever got there first has played, and the other player has simply played on top of them if the card happens to fit.
Clearing a pile out of your row leaves a gap, and gaps can be filled. Take any one of the face-up cards elsewhere in your row, slide it across into the vacant spot, and expose whatever was hiding under it. The privilege covers that single card and nothing else: the pile it had been resting on stays put. Shuffling cards into gaps this way is your main tool for prising open a blocked row, and it pays even when you are not blocked at all, since five live cards to choose between beat four.
If the moment comes when neither player can play, you spit again. Both players simultaneously turn the top card of their reserve onto the centre pile on their own side, giving two fresh top cards, and play resumes at once. Either player may call for the spit, but it is only correct when both of you are genuinely stuck: if your opponent still has a legal card they simply play it and the call lapses. There is no gain in calling early, because a spit hands your opponent a fresh card at exactly the same moment it hands you one. Repeat this whenever play jams.
If your reserve is empty but your opponent still has spit cards, only they spit. They choose which of the two centre piles to spit onto — and having chosen, they must keep spitting onto that same pile every time play jams for the rest of the round. The other pile sits frozen until somebody can play on it.
Later rounds rarely start with 26 cards a side, so you lay out whatever you finished the last round holding. Build the row of one, two, three, four and five from the left as far as your cards reach, turn the top card of every pile you managed to complete, and keep any surplus as your spit pile. With 20 cards that is the full row and a reserve of five; with exactly 15 it is the full row and no reserve. Below 15 you cannot complete the row, so deal into the five piles as far as the cards go and turn the top card of each: with 12 that is piles of one, two, three, four and two, and no reserve at all. A player with no reserve cannot spit, so if that is already true when a round begins, only one centre pile is ever created, started by the other player, and both of you build on that single pile for the whole round.
A round ends either when one of you empties their stock row or when both of you jam — no legal play anywhere and no reserve left to unstick it. Either way the two centre piles are then claimed by a race, not by right: both players slap a pile, each trying for whichever looks shorter. Choose different piles and you each take the one you chose; go for the same one and the hand underneath takes it while the other player gets the pile left over. Going out first buys you nothing here beyond the head start of knowing the round is over. None of this applies to a round fought over a single centre pile, since there is nothing to choose between: that pile goes to the player who did not go out, on top of everything still lying in front of them.
Each player then gathers everything they own: the centre pile they claimed, whatever is left in their stock piles, and any unused spit cards. Shuffle it all together and lay out a new row for the next round, and go again.
Spit is often confused with Speed, and they are close cousins, but the layouts are different. Spit gives each player five stock piles laid in a row, every one showing its top card, and no hand to hold; in Speed each player holds a hand of five cards drawn from a single face-down draw pile, and the reserve cards sit in the middle as side stacks rather than in front of each player.
Goal & scoring
The aim is to shed all your cards, and there is no point scoring anywhere in the game. Rounds are just a mechanism for moving cards from the player who is losing to the player who is winning.
What matters is winning the slap for the smaller of the two centre piles, because your next layout is then smaller than your opponent's. Shrink it far enough and you reach fifteen cards or fewer, at which point your entire holding goes into the stock row and you have no spit pile at all; below fifteen you cannot even fill all five piles.
That is how the game actually ends. Once you have no reserve, clearing your stock row leaves you with nothing at all in front of you and nothing to pick up, so you have run out of cards and you win outright. Your opponent, meanwhile, is stuck with a full spread and rounds that get harder every time.
If you would rather not play to a finish, agree on a fixed number of rounds and give the game to whoever holds fewer cards at the end, or simply count round wins.
Variants
First out chooses — Drop the slapping. Whoever empties their stock row first simply picks whichever centre pile they judge smaller and the other player takes the rest, and when a round jams instead, the player with fewer cards still spread out chooses first. One account records this as its contributor's own version and says plainly that the slapping form is the more widespread of the two. It removes a reflex contest from a game that already has one, which some tables prefer and others think misses the point.
Speed — The closest relative, sometimes sold under the same name and sometimes called by it. Each player has a single face-down stock and a hand of five, and the reserve cards sit in the centre rather than in front of anybody: two piles of ten with the two starting cards between them, and a stock of 15 in front of each player. You play from your hand to the two centre piles and draw back up to five as you go. Some play it the other way round, 20 in each stock and only five in each centre reserve. If both players stall, a fresh card goes onto each centre pile, turned from the end pile beside it. Empty your stock and then your hand and you have won the deal, scoring a point for every card your opponent still holds; the first to an agreed total, say 25, wins.
Nertz — The multiplayer descendant, also called Pounce or Racing Demon. Each player uses their own full deck with a distinguishable back, lays out a solitaire-style tableau plus a 13-card Nertz pile, and everyone races to build shared foundation piles in the centre starting with aces. The real-time free-for-all feel is the same, but it takes two players or many, and it adds a genuine scoring system based on cards played to the centre and cards left in your Nertz pile.
Pairing off in your own row — If two of your five face-up cards show the same rank, you may move one straight on top of the other. That turns up whatever was underneath, or clears a pile outright, so it is a second way of prising open a row that will not move. One account builds it into the ordinary setup and play; the other lists it as something some people do. It makes blocked positions markedly rarer.
Shorter and longer rows — Some play with four stock piles rather than five, holding one, two, three and four cards. Others keep five piles but deal eleven cards into the middle one and a single card into each of the other four. Both change how quickly a row can be cleared and how much of your holding is buried where you cannot reach it, and either can be combined with the rule that cards played to a centre pile must alternate in colour — which makes the game considerably harder.
Rules checked against Pagat, Wikipedia, Official Game Rules, Gamerules.com, Card Game Wiki, Game On Family.