Snap is about as simple as a card game gets: everyone turns cards up one at a time, and when two match, the first person to shout "snap!" wins them. It is a traditional first game for small children and needs no counting or reading at all. A game takes about 10 minutes.

What You Need

Players: 2-6.
Deck: One standard 52-card deck. Only ranks matter - suits and colours are ignored.
Extras: Nothing. Purpose-made Snap decks with pictures work just as well.

Key Terms

Your stack: Your face-down pile of cards.
Your pile: The face-up pile you build beside your stack as you turn cards over.
Snap: The call when two face-up piles show the same rank on top.
Snap pool: A discarded pile in the middle, created when someone calls wrongly.

Setup

Deal the whole deck out face down, as evenly as possible.
Keep your cards in a face-down stack in front of you. Nobody looks at their cards.
Leave space beside each stack for a face-up pile.

How to Play

Going clockwise from the dealer's left, each player turns their top card face up onto their own pile, turning it away from themselves.
Watch every player's face-up pile, not just your own.
If the top cards of any two face-up piles match in rank, the first player to shout "snap!" wins both of those piles and adds them face down to the bottom of their stack.
Play then continues from the player to the winner's left.
If you shout snap when there is no match, your own face-up pile is taken away and placed in the middle as a snap pool.
If any player's face-up card later matches the top of the snap pool, the first to shout "snap pool!" wins it.

Scoring & Winning

There is no score. You are playing for cards.
When your stack runs out, turn your face-up pile over and carry on. When you have no cards at all, you are out.
The last player left with cards wins.

Example

Your top card is a 7 and the player opposite turns up a 7 as well. You shout "snap!" first and take both face-up piles into the bottom of your stack.

Variations

Easy Snap: all cards go to a single shared pile, and you call snap when two consecutive cards match. Much simpler for very young players.
Snap on colour or suit instead of rank, for a faster game.
Slap Snap: slap the pile instead of shouting, like Slapjack.

Tips for New Players

Turn your card away from you. Seeing it a moment before everyone else is considered cheating.
Look at the middle of the table so all the piles are in view at once, rather than darting between them.
With very young players, agree that a wrong call just costs a card rather than the whole pile.