Seven Up
Got a couple of minutes? Seven Up is a quick card-sequencing game — reveal and arrange Ace through Seven before your opponent does. Most games are over in about a minute. It is the same idea as Garbage, with seven cards instead of ten.
Overview
Seven Up is a two-player race played with a standard 52-card deck. Each player has a row of seven face-down cards standing for slots Ace through Seven. You win by turning your whole row face up, every card in its own slot.
Both players are dealt seven cards face down. The rest become the stock pile in the centre, with its top card turned up to start the discard pile.
Both players always play seven cards. One game decides it: the first player to reveal all seven slots wins.
How to play
- Draw the top stock card, or take a usable discard.
- Place Ace in position 1, Two in position 2, through Seven in position 7.
- Reveal the displaced card and keep placing while it matches an open position.
- Discard an unusable card to end your turn.
- Reveal all seven positions first to win.
Drawing and placing rules
- Ace counts as 1 and Seven counts as 7.
- Take the discard only if it fits an open position immediately.
- An 8 or higher cannot be placed and must be discarded.
- A repeated rank is unusable once its position is filled.
Half the deck is dead
Only Ace through Seven can ever be placed — 28 of the 52 cards. Everything from an Eight upwards, all the face cards included, is waste: 24 cards that can only be drawn and thrown away.
That is far more dead weight than Garbage, where the opening ten-card row leaves 40 of 52 cards live. Seven Up is the shorter game, but any single draw is less likely to help you.
Tips and strategy
- Watch which ranks your opponent still needs.
- Remember useful cards already discarded.
- Prefer the discard when it begins a guaranteed placement chain.
- If the stock runs out, the discard pile is shuffled back in and play continues, so no rank is ever gone for good.
Online multiplayer
Choose Play Online from the menu to join the lobby and challenge another player instead of the computer. The Android app supports online multiplayer with friends too.
Related games
For the ten-card version of the same idea, with a Wild Card mode, online multiplayer in the browser, and a ladder of progressively shorter rounds, play Garbage (Trash).