Anyone familiar with a game called 51 I’ve been playing recently with my family? I can’t seem to find anything about it online
I first learned to play this game as a little kid with my brother from our mom and it was just as confusing back then. One of my relatives got out of hospital recently and I’ve been looking after them with another relative which lead to the 3 of us playing this game at night before bed for the last few days
Each player except the dealer is dealt 7 cards from a standard 52 card deck with the jokers removed, the dealer is dealt an extra 8th card and goes first. Once all the cards are dealt the top card is burnt and the card underneath it is placed face up, the card immediately below the face up card in value from the same suit is a wild card that can be any card you want. Ace’s are high so in the event that the face up card is a 2 the wild would be the 3 from whatever suit the face up card is. The goal is to be the first person to use all 7 cards to form two separate sets of cards, a run of 3 or 4 and 3 or 4 of a kind. For some reason 3 of a kind can be 3 of the same rank or 3 cards from the same suit in sequential order, which yes I know is actually a run and not 3 of a kind, I don’t get it either. The dealer starts the game by choosing 1 card to discard and place face up. The next person must then decide to either pick up the card the dealer placed down or draw a card from the deck before discarding one of their own cards face up. The next person does the same, they can either pick up the card the previous player discarded or draw from the deck before discarding one of their own cards face up. This cycle continues until one player has two sets, the player who successfully managed to make their two sets first is given a score of zero while the other players are given a score based on the combined value of their cards that don’t make up a set, with face cards and Aces all being worth the same amount of points, once a player’s score goes over 51 they’re out of the game
Examples of some winning hand combinations would be:
3 of a Kind Run of 4
(Ace, King, Queen) of ♠️ (8, 7, 6, 5) of ♦️
(7, 7, 7) of any suit (5, 4, 3, 2) of ♣️
4 of a Kind Run of 3
(10, 10, 10, 10) (9, 8, 7) of ♥️
If the wild is the Jack of ♥️ it could replace any card in those examples
I found references to other games called 51 from China and Japan, but they’re not the same game
Posted Feb 12, 2026, 10:48 AM UTC