(Old maid)

Black Peter is a fun and simple card game for kids. It is actually a variation of Old maid, played with a special deck of cards that have childish drawings of various cartoon characters on them.

Since this specific deck of cards can’t be bought just anywhere, I’ll also explain how you can play a game of Old maid with a regular deck.

Rules

The rules are very, very simple. The deck consists of a bunch of cards that go in pairs and one card that doesn’t (Black Peter).

At the start of the game all cards are dealt out to the players (some players might get a card more than the rest) and then everyone discards all the pairs they have in their hand.

After this is done, the game continues to the left. The first player draws a card from the player on his left and then the next player draws a card form the player to his left and so on. Everytime a player makes a pair, he discards it.

At the end of the game only one player is left with a single card, the Black Peter. That player is the losing player.

Old maid

If you don’t have a deck of Black Peter cards or some similar game cards, you can still play with a regular deck of 52 cards. This game is called the Old maid and is actually the original game from France and all other similar games probably derive from it.

What you do is, take one card from the 52 card deck(one of the Aces, Queens, whatever…) or add a Joker. Now all the cards match in paired suits (diamonds with hearts, clubs with spades) except one (the Joker or the paired card to the one you took out). That unmatched card is now the Old maid, the same as Black Peter.

So there you have it, with this “modified” regular deck you can play Old maid in the same way you would play Black Peter.

Fun idea

Since this is a kids game, you can make it even more fun and turn it in to an activity lasting a few hours. How? Make your own deck of cards! All you need is some hard paper, glue, crayons and your imagination. Create your own characters and bring them to life on your very own deck of cards!

I wish you hours of fun with your kids and Black Peter, enjoy!