
Nertz is a fast, real-time multiplayer card game often described as competitive solitaire. Every player uses their own 52-card deck and plays simultaneously, racing to empty a 13-card 'Nertz' pile by building cards onto shared central foundation piles. The round ends the instant someone empties their pile and shouts 'Nertz!', and scores are tallied from cards played to the center minus a penalty for cards left undealt.
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Track cards played and Nertz pile penalties
Each player uses their own 52-card deck. Deal a 13-card Nertz pile (top card up), 4 face-up work piles, and a 35-card stock. All players play at once, building Aces-up foundation piles in the shared Lake and work piles down in alternating color. The hand ends when someone empties their Nertz pile and calls 'Nertz!'.
Nertz is real-time competitive solitaire. Each player has their own deck and personal layout; everyone plays at once, all hands rushing to dump cards onto communal center piles. There are no turns and no waiting — speed and pattern recognition decide the round.
Nertz (also spelled Nerts, and known as Pounce, Racing Demon, Peanuts, Squeal, or Scrooge) is a real-time, multiplayer solitaire race. There are no turns — every player plays at the same time, as fast as they can. Each player uses their own standard 52-card deck with a distinguishable back design so cards can be sorted back to their owners afterward.
One standard 52-card deck with a unique back design/color.
A flat playing surface within reach of a shared center area (the Lake).
Nertz pile: Count out 13 cards face-down into a stack; turn the top card face-up. This is your Nertz pile — emptying it ends the round.
Work piles (the River): Deal 4 cards face-up in a row next to the Nertz pile. These are your tableau/work piles.
Stock (the Stream): The remaining 35 cards form a face-down draw pile in your hand or in front of you.
When everyone is ready, someone says "go" and all players play simultaneously:
The center is a communal area where foundation piles are started with Aces and built up in suit (A-2-3-...-K).
Anyone may play to any Lake pile — it is first-come, first-served. There is no ownership of center piles.
Cards played to the Lake are how you score, so getting cards into the center quickly is the whole game.
Build your 4 work piles down in alternating color (e.g. a red 9 on a black 10).
You may move a card (or an ordered run) from one work pile onto another to free things up.
When a work pile becomes empty, you may fill it with any single available card (typically your face-up Nertz card or a card from your stream/waste).
Only the top (face-up) card of your Nertz pile is playable. Play it to the Lake or onto a work pile when legal; then flip the next card face-up.
The goal is to empty the Nertz pile — the cards in it are a big penalty at scoring.
Turn cards from your stock 3 at a time into a face-up waste pile (the stream). Only the top waste card is playable.
Keep cycling through your stock to find cards you can play to the Lake or your work piles.
The instant a player empties their entire 13-card Nertz pile, they shout "Nertz!" and all play stops immediately. The hand is over for everyone, even mid-move.
After the call, sort the Lake by deck back so each player can count their own cards:
+1 point for each card you played into the Lake (the center).
-2 points for each card remaining in your Nertz pile.
Some groups add a +10 bonus to whoever called Nertz (an optional house rule; formal tournament play typically uses no call bonus).
A hand's score can be negative if you left many cards in your Nertz pile and played few to the center.
Deal and play repeated hands, accumulating scores. The first player (or team) to reach the agreed target — most commonly 100 points — wins. If no one reaches the target within an agreed number of hands (tournament play often caps at 20 hands), the highest cumulative score wins.
Team / Partnership Nertz: partners pool their Lake cards and Nertz penalties into a single team score; teammates can play each other's cards to the center.
Head-to-head: the two-player race is the purest skill test — your only opponent's speed directly limits how many cards you can land in the Lake before the call.
Per hand: +1 for each card you played to the Lake, -2 for each card left in your Nertz pile, optionally +10 for the player who called Nertz (house rule; off by default). Net hand scores accumulate; first to the target score (default 100) wins. Higher total wins.
Lake Cards and Nertz Cards Remaining are diagnostic count metrics only — because each remaining Nertz card is -2 (not -1) and the optional call bonus is a flat +10, they never sum to Total Points and a hand can be negative; record Total Points as authoritative. The pointsToWin, callBonusEnabled, and maxHands knobs are match params on this variant's ruleset; the +10 call bonus is folded into total_points and is not separately recorded as a metric, and maxHands is the agreed hand cap with no per-side metric.