Card game Published 08/10/2025

Asshole: the ladder, the ranks, and the rule you get to invent

A proper card game with a social hierarchy bolted onto it. Getting out first is worth something, getting out last costs you, and the exchange between hands is what makes the whole thing turn.

Four players seated around a round table passing cards to each other, one hand giving two cards across the table, drinks and a discard pile in the middle — The exchange between hands, which is where the hierarchy does its work.

Asshole, known in politer company as President, is the only game on this shelf that is a genuine card game first. Take the drinking out of it and you still have something worth playing, which is not true of most of the rest.

It is a climbing game: each player tries to get rid of their whole hand, and the order in which people go out sets a hierarchy that carries into the next deal. The hierarchy is what makes it a party game rather than a card game, because it means the previous hand is still being felt in this one.

The deal

Four to eight players. Six is the sweet spot.
Deal the entire deck out, one at a time. Uneven hands are normal and are not corrected.
Card order runs 3 low up through the numbers, then jack, queen, king, ace. The 2 sits above the ace and clears the pile, which is the rule most worth confirming out loud because a good many tables play it differently.
In the first hand, whoever holds the 3 of clubs leads. After that, the previous hand's Asshole deals and the previous President leads.

How a hand is played

The leader plays any single card, or any set of matching cards: a pair, a triple, four of a kind.
Each player in turn must play the same number of cards of a strictly higher value, or pass.
A pass does not remove you from the hand. You can come back in on the next pile.
When everybody has passed in turn, the pile is cleared away and whoever played last leads a fresh pile with anything they like.
A 2 played on any pile clears it immediately, and the player who played it leads again.
Players who run out of cards are out for that hand, and the order in which they go out is the whole point.

The ranks

First out is the President. Second is the Vice President. Last is the Asshole, and second last is the Vice Asshole. Everybody in between is a neutral, and at a table of six that is two people with no title and no obligations, which is a fine place to be.

The ranks are not scores. They do not accumulate and there is no winner at the end of the evening. They are a state you are in for exactly one hand, and the whole game is about escaping the bottom of the table or defending the top of it.

The exchange, which is the actual mechanic

Between hands, before the lead, the ranks trade cards.

The Asshole gives the President their two highest cards. The President gives back any two cards of their choice, which will be their two worst.
The Vice Asshole gives the Vice President their single highest card, and receives any one card back.
Neutrals exchange nothing.

This is the engine. It means the President starts each hand with a stronger deck than they were dealt, and the Asshole starts with a weaker one, so the hierarchy is self reinforcing and escaping the bottom takes a genuinely good hand or a genuinely good pass. It is also why the game gets better the longer it runs.

The ranks are the game. The drinking is what the ranks are denominated in, and a table that stops re dealing has stopped playing.

The Asshole's duties

The Asshole gathers the cards, shuffles, deals, and clears the table between hands. At most tables they also fetch. This is not cruelty for its own sake: it gives the bottom rank something to do during the moment when everybody else is enjoying their position, and it keeps the game moving, because there is always somebody whose job it is to start the next hand.

A hand dealing playing cards one at a time around a round wooden table to five seated players, cards mid air, glasses pushed to the outside edge, warm pendant light — The Asshole deals, which is one of the duties of the rank.

The rule the President gets to invent

In the common house version, the President may invent one rule at the moment they take the title, and it holds for as long as they hold it. When somebody else becomes President, the old rule dies with the old title.

Good ones are small and constant: nobody may address the Asshole by name, cards are played with the left hand, anybody who passes drinks. Bad ones are the ones that change the card game itself, because they make the next hand unplayable and the President is about to lose their title anyway.

Two limits are worth agreeing at the start. One rule at a time, and it dies with the title. Without those, by the fifth hand you are playing a game with nine active rules made by four different people, which is the same failure mode described at the end of Kings Cup: the rules, card by card.

A messy pile of face up played cards heaped in the centre of a table with a pair of kings on top, hands of cards held at the edges of the frame, low lamp light — The pile clears when everybody has passed, and the last player leads again.

House cards worth knowing

The 7 rule. A 7 played forces the next player to play lower than 7 rather than higher. It reverses the direction of the climb for one turn and it catches people who were not paying attention.
The 8 rule. An 8 skips the next player entirely.
Social 4. Everybody drinks when a 4 is played. Purely decorative and it slows the hand down, which some tables want.
Doubles clear. Playing a pair matching the pair on the pile clears it. Adds a lot of tension to the middle of a hand.

Pick the ones you want before the deal and leave the rest out. A table trying to hold four house cards and a presidential rule in its head will misplay every hand.

What it needs from the room

Asshole is a sitting down game for a table that will stay put for an hour, which makes it the opposite of the openers. If people are still arriving, play something a latecomer can join between cards, which is exactly what High or Low is for. If the table is too crowded for everybody to hold a hand comfortably and reach a central pile, the seating fix is in a twelve person night on a six person table.

And if it turns out the group enjoys the card game more than the drinking, that is worth noticing rather than ignoring; the shelf of games that work well beside full glasses is in board games that survive a crowded table.

Filed under Drinking games. Published 08/10/2025.