Every point explained

How Four Card Golf scoring works

Add the values of the cards still in your hand when the hole ends. Lowest wins the hole; the lowest total across the match wins the game.

Card values

An Ace is 1. Number cards from 2 to 10 are face value. A Jack or Queen is 10. A King is 0. Suits do not affect the score. These values apply to both Classic and Extreme on this site.

Knocking: a worked example

Imagine you knock with 8 points. Your opponents each get one final turn. If they finish with 11 and 15, your 8 wins and everyone records their own hand total.

If an opponent finishes with 6, your knock failed: add 10 penalty points, giving you 18 for the hole. The opponent records 6. If another player also has 8 and nobody is lower, the hole is tied and you receive no knock penalty.

Only the knocker can receive the failed-knock penalty. Other players do not automatically get +5 for losing. The risk of +10 balances the advantage of deciding when a hole ends.

Extreme: fewer cards, or a penalty card

A successful burn removes a card from your hand; a successful steal removes the matching opposing card and lets you give them one of yours. Score the cards that remain, not the original four positions. A failed match adds one hidden penalty card, outlined in red. Its actual rank contributes to your score—it is not a fixed one-point penalty.

Reading the golf scorecard

After the final action, all hands appear with their card points and any knock penalty. Choose See total scores for the hole-by-hole scorecard. Your name is underlined. Each column is one hole; the total sums those columns. Play 1, 3 or 9 holes from the home-page setup.

A player can win individual holes but lose the overall match. For example, scores of 4, 18 and 9 total 31; scores of 7, 10 and 8 total 25, so the second player wins. Equal final totals share the win—there is no hidden tie-break.

Common mix-ups

Four Card Golf has many house variants. Do not import vertical-pair cancellation from Six Card Golf, count Jacks as 11, or assume a power makes a Queen cheap. Here, J and Q remain 10 even when their Extreme power is useful.

Learn Extreme powers and matching →