Cheat Card Game Online: Lie Well, and Catch the Liars

How to play the Cheat card game

Cheat takes about a minute to learn and a long time to get good at, because the cards are only half of it. The other half is whether anyone believes you.

1. The whole deck gets dealt out

Every card goes to the players, as evenly as it divides. Nobody has a draw pile and nobody has cards in reserve. Whatever you are holding is what you have to get rid of, and everything you fail to get rid of is what loses you the game.

There are two decks to pick from. Quick uses 32 cards, Ace up to 8, and takes about two minutes. Classic uses all 52, Ace up to King, which is the authentic game and a considerably longer one. Everything else is identical, and counting works the same in both because either way only four of each rank exist.

2. Every turn has a required rank

The first turn is Aces. The next is twos, then threes, and so on to the top of the deck, then it starts again at Aces. The rank is shown in gold at the top of the table all game, so you never have to remember where the count is. You do not get to choose it, which is the single most important thing about the game: sooner or later the rank comes round and you do not hold it.

3. Put cards down and say what they are

On your turn you place 1 to 4 cards face down on the pile and claim they are all the required rank. Nobody can see them. If the rank is sevens and you put down two cards, you are claiming two sevens, whatever they actually are. You must play something, so when you hold no sevens at all you have no legal option except to lie.

4. Anyone can call cheat

Once the cards are down, any other player can call cheat. The cards are turned face up and compared with the claim. There are only two outcomes and they are symmetrical, which is what makes the call a real decision rather than a free shot:

Whoever picks up adds the entire pile to their hand, which by the middle of a game can be fifteen cards or more. That is why calling cheat on a hunch is expensive, and why a good player calls rarely and accurately rather than often.

5. Going out has to be honest

Empty your hand and you have won, with one condition that catches almost everybody the first time. A play is not final until the chance to challenge it has passed. If your last two cards go down as a lie and somebody calls it, you pick up the pile and you are back in the game with a fistful of cards. You cannot bluff your way over the finish line.

Cheat, BS, Bluff and I Doubt It are all the same game

If you grew up calling this something else, you are not thinking of a different game. The rules below are the rules you already know under another name:

• Cheat is the usual name in Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.
• BS is what most people call it in the United States, after what you shout when you think someone is lying.
• I Doubt It is the older and politer American name, and the one you will find in printed card game books.
• Bluff and Liar turn up across Europe and South Asia, usually with identical rules.

There are small regional differences in how many cards you may put down at once and whether the rank climbs or is chosen freely. This version uses the most widely played set: a climbing rank and a limit of four cards per turn.

One rule here is different, and it is a better game for it

In many printed versions, whoever picks up the pile starts the count again from Aces. We tried that first and it does not hold up. Because the count resets so often, play spends nearly all of its time on Aces, Aces then accumulate in everybody's hands, so almost every Ace claim is one that somebody can prove is false, and almost every play gets caught.

That is not a guess. Across several hundred computer games, hands were picking cards up at exactly the same rate they were shedding them, a 79 percent challenge rate held the whole game in equilibrium, and more than nine games in ten simply never ended. So here the rank keeps climbing whatever happens, and whoever picks up the pile just leads the next turn. It is the simpler rule to explain and it is the one that lets a game finish.

There is also a limit on length, because Cheat can genuinely drag. Down to a single card you are still forced to play it, so going out needs that last card to match the rank that happens to come next. If nobody has emptied their hand after a very long game, the smallest hand wins. On the Quick deck that almost never happens: across 120 measured games at every table size from three to six players, the limit decided none of them.

How to actually win at Cheat

Count, because counting is free

Only four of each rank exist. If you are holding three Queens and somebody claims two Queens, they cannot possibly be telling the truth, and calling cheat is not a gamble at all. This is the one piece of certainty the game hands you, it costs nothing to notice, and most beginners never use it. Glance at your own hand before you decide whether to believe anybody.

Lie small

A one card lie is nearly invisible. A four card lie is almost always caught, because the more you claim, the more likely it is that somebody at the table holds enough of that rank to know you are inventing it. Dumping four cards at once feels like progress and is usually how you end up holding twenty.

Tell the truth when you can, all of it

An honest play cannot be caught, ever. So if the rank is fives and you hold three fives, put down all three. Holding one back to keep your options open sounds clever and is a mistake: you have slowed your own escape for a card whose rank will not come round again for another full lap.

Keep pairs, throw singletons

This is the habit that separates players who win from players who merely survive. Since you can only go out honestly, the cards worth protecting are the ones that could leave together. Two of a kind is a way out. Two unrelated single cards are not. When you are forced to lie, throw away the ranks you only hold one of and keep your pairs intact, and you will arrive at the endgame with something you can legitimately finish on.

Call the leader, not the liar

The question is never whether somebody is lying, because by the second lap almost everybody is. The question is whether this particular lie is worth the pile. Calling the player who is two cards from winning is worth it, because being right sets them back further than anything else you can do. Calling somebody who is holding eighteen cards achieves nothing even when you are right. And when you are the one in front, stop calling altogether: losing the pile throws away the lead you already built.

Watch who picks up

When a player takes the pile, you know something concrete: they now hold every card that was just turned face up. If three sevens went into their hand two turns ago and they later claim a seven, that claim is a lot more believable than it looks. This is the closest thing to card counting the game allows, and nobody at a casual table is doing it.

Is Cheat a game of luck or skill?

Both, and the balance shifts with the number of players. With two people at the table it is mostly luck, because your opponent only has to beat one bluff and you cannot win without your final card happening to match the rank that comes next. Add players and the skill shows: a bluff now has to get past three or four separate judgements, and the player who counts and stays quiet pulls ahead.

Our own computer opponents measure this out. Playing head to head, the hard opponent beats the easy one in about 85 games out of 100 and the medium one in 59, which is a real edge in a game with this much variance. Interestingly, the thing that separates them is not how often they call cheat. An early version in which the stronger player called more often lost to the weaker one, 38 games to 62, because a wrong call hands over the whole pile. Restraint beats suspicion, and that one finding shaped all three difficulty levels.

Cheat card game FAQ

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