Last Updated on July 23, 2025 by The Official Game Rules Team
If there’s one game my family can’t get enough of, it’s Nertz. We’ve played it for years, through holidays, family gatherings, and lazy weekends. It’s chaotic, fast-paced, loud, and competitive—and we absolutely love it. It’s not just a card game in our house; it’s a tradition, a bonding ritual, and hands down, our favorite way to spend time together. Not to mention everyone we introduce it to abosultely loves it!
So I thought that it deserved its own blog post so I could explain the game and hopefully introduce others to it! To explore the full rules of Nertz, click here.
Overview
If you’ve never played Nertz, imagine a mashup of Solitaire and Speed, played simultaneously by everyone at the table, each with their own deck of cards. The goal is to get rid of your “Nertz pile” as fast as you can by playing into shared foundation piles in the middle of the table, all while managing your own layout like you would in Solitaire. It sounds simple at first, but when you throw in four, five, or even six players, things get frantic—and hilarious—very quickly.
Why We Love it
What makes Nertz special for us isn’t just the gameplay (though it is addicting). It’s how alive everyone becomes while playing. We’re yelling out “Nertz!” across the table, laughing at the chaos, arguing about who got to the pile first, and high-fiving when someone clears their stack. There’s something timeless about it. No matter how many times we play, no one ever gets tired of it. We’re always ready for “just one more round.”
There’s also zero downtime. Everyone’s playing at once, so you’re never sitting around waiting for your turn. And that speed—the urgency to beat everyone else—makes it incredibly exciting. But it’s not all serious; someone always forgets how to score, or accidentally plays on their own pile, and we’re all cracking up before long.
We’ve played with homemade score sheets, themed decks, and even made a family scoreboard we keep updated. It’s part of who we are now. We’ve had new people join the game over the years—friends, cousins, even in-laws—and within one round, they’re hooked too.
The best part is all you need a few decks of different backed cards (you can use decks with the same card back but you have to mark each card to differeniate them from each other). You can also buy a Nertz set that comes with different colored cards!
We like other games, sure. But Nertz? That’s the one we’ll be playing until we die. It’s fast, fun, and never gets old—and it always brings us together.
