Kitten Fishing

Kitten Fishing uses one standard 52-card deck with no jokers and is played by two people. You sit at the bottom of the table and the computer opponent, Kitty, sits at the top. The cards are shuffled and dealt alternately until each player has 26 cards, which they keep face down as their own pile. The table starts empty.

Your goal is to win cards back from the table so that your pile never runs dry. The player whose pile runs out first loses.

The first flip alternates from game to game: you start the very first game, Kitty starts the next one, and so on. When Kitty starts, the game opens with the message "Your opponent flips first this game". On your turn you turn over the top card of your pile and place it at the end of the row on the table, just after the previous card.

The piles stay face down, and neither player can see the order of the cards inside them — not even their own next card. There is no choice about which card to play: whatever comes off the top is the card you play.

Every time a card is flipped, it is checked straight away. The first of these that applies decides what happens:

1. Jack sweep: the card is a Jack and there was at least one card on the table. You take every card on the table plus the Jack.
2. Fishing: a card of the same rank (any suit) is already on the table. You take that matching card, every card placed after it, and the card you just flipped.
3. Otherwise the card simply stays on the table and it is your opponent's turn.

For example, if the table shows 5♠, 9♥, K♦, 3♣ and you flip 9♣, it matches the 9♥. You take 9♥, K♦, 3♣ and 9♣ — four cards — and only 5♠ is left on the table.

If the table shows 5♠, 9♥ and you flip J♦, you take 5♠, 9♥ and J♦, and the table is cleared.

A Jack flipped onto an empty table captures nothing and stays there. The next Jack to appear sweeps the whole table, including that first Jack.

Because a matching rank is fished out the moment it appears, the table never holds two cards of the same rank, so the row never grows beyond 13 cards.

Captured cards keep the order they had on the table, from the earliest one down to the card you just flipped, and go face down to the bottom of your pile. They will only come up again after you have played through the cards above them.

A capture does not give you an extra turn. Whether you captured or not, the next flip belongs to your opponent.

After each flip is resolved, if the player who just flipped has 0 cards left — they played their last card and captured nothing — that player loses immediately and the other player wins. If that last card makes a catch, the captured cards return to the pile and the game goes on.

A game of Kitten Fishing can swing back and forth for a long time, but almost every game ends naturally well before any limit. Just in case, this site sets a safety limit of 5000 flips for the two players together. If there is still no winner after the 5000th flip is resolved, the players compare the number of cards in their piles; cards on the table do not count. The player with more cards wins, and equal piles are a draw. The result panel then says "Play limit reached — decided by card count".

If you don't want to flip all the way to the end, press See the result. After you confirm, the remaining cards are flipped instantly and the real result appears. Because there are no decisions in the game, the outcome is already fixed by the deal, so this is exactly the result you would get by carrying on flipping by hand.

Known in Chinese as 小猫钓鱼 (Xiao Mao Diao Yu, literally "the kitten goes fishing"), Kitten Fishing is the first card game many children in China learn. There are no hands to sort, no combinations to remember and no points to add up. If you can read the ranks from Ace to King and tell when two cards match, you can play a whole game. Parents often use it to help young children practise recognising numbers, spotting pairs and waiting for their turn.

There are no decisions to make. The order of both piles is fixed when the deck is shuffled, so the outcome is pure luck. That is exactly why adults and children, beginners and experienced players, are on equal terms. The fun is in the suspense before every flip: will this card match something on the table? Will a Jack turn up and sweep away a long row of cards?

House rules vary from place to place. Some families play without the Jack sweep and capture only by matching ranks; in another close relative the player who captures flips again straight away. This site plays with the Jack sweep, alternating turns after a capture, the player who runs out first losing, the first flip alternating between games, and a 5000-flip safety limit.

Kitten Fishing should not be confused with other "fishing" card games. In the Chinese game usually called simply "Fishing", you capture table cards with cards from your hand by matching ranks or making ten, and the player with the most captured cards wins. In Go Fish, you ask your opponent for cards to collect sets of four. The flipping, matching and pile-running-out of Kitten Fishing is closer in spirit to games like War than to either of those.

Open the page and play right away — no download, no sign-up. The full game works in portrait and landscape on phones and in desktop browsers.

• Flip a card: on your turn, tap your pile or press Flip. On a computer you can also press Space or Enter. Your first game shows the hint "Tap your pile to flip a card".
• See every capture: when fishing, the two matching cards are highlighted first, then the captured run slides to the capturer's pile. A Jack sweep has its own message. The status line says who took how many cards, for example "Fished! You take 4 cards".
• Always in view: both pile counts, whose turn it is, every card on the table and the number of plays so far stay visible. When a pile gets very small, the count is highlighted.
• Kitty's turn: the opponent waits a moment and then flips automatically. Tapping your pile during its turn only shows "Wait for your opponent" and does not change the game.
• Taking turns to start: the first flip switches sides with every new game, and you start the very first one. When Kitty starts, you see "Your opponent flips first this game".
• Speed up animations: while a deal or capture animation is playing, a tap or key press only finishes the animation at once — it never flips an extra card. The deal can also be skipped with Skip.
• Auto play: switch on Auto and your turns are flipped for you too, so you can sit back and watch a whole game. Switch it off at any time to flip by hand again.
• See the result: don't feel like flipping on? Press See the result (an icon button in portrait on phones) and confirm. The remaining cards are flipped instantly and the real result is shown — the same one you would reach by flipping to the end.
• End and restart: at the end you see a win, loss or draw, the reason, both final pile sizes and the total number of plays. Press Play again to start straight away. Starting a New game in the middle of a game asks you to confirm once.
• Autosave: refresh the page, rotate your phone or enter and leave fullscreen, and the game continues where it left off.

There is no undo and no hint. Every card is the one fixed in your pile, so undoing and flipping again would show the same card, and there is never a better move to suggest.

No skill changes the result of Kitten Fishing, but knowing what to look for makes every game more exciting.

Count the Jacks. A deck has only four Jacks, and each one can clear a long row in one go. The more cards there are on the table, the more the next Jack is worth.

A longer row means more catches. Every extra rank on the table raises the chance that the next flip matches something. When the row reaches ten or more cards, almost every flip can land a big catch.

A small pile is not a lost game. With only one or two cards left, a single lucky match brings a stack of cards back to your pile. Big comebacks are common.

Games can run long. With cards flowing back and forth, several hundred flips in one game is normal. If you want to see the ending sooner, turn on Auto, or press See the result to finish the game in one go.