Rules

Every player tends a small grid of face-down cards. When the round ends, all hands are revealed. The player holding the lowest total value wins.

You’ll get there by swapping unknown cards for better ones, discarding the heavy ones, and matching your way to a smaller hand. End the round with a confident “Check” before anyone can slim down further.

Check! uses a standard 52-card deck, no jokers. Aces are worth −1, the only cards that subtract. Number cards score their face value, so a 7 is 7 points. Jack 11, Queen 12, King 13: the heaviest cards in the deck. Each carries an ability (section 07).

Three things live on the table:

• The draw pile: face down. The remaining count sits right on the top card’s back.
• The discard pile: face up. Only the top card matters, and everyone can see it.
• Your hand: four cards dealt face down in a 2×2 grid in front of you. You don’t get to look at them, with one exception (next section).

Players gather in a lobby and the game master starts the game. The moment it starts, the lobby locks; nobody else can join.

Everyone receives four cards, face down, in a 2×2 grid. Then comes the one free look of the game, the initial peek: you may secretly look at your bottom two cards, just those, just once. Memorize them; they go back face down.

Turns move around the table. On yours, you must draw, one of two ways, and every turn ends with a card landing face up on the discard pile.

A drawn King, Queen, or Jack does nothing by itself. Abilities trigger only when a special card is discarded from your hand, never when you tuck one in. Every discard immediately opens the matching window (section 06); once it closes and any abilities resolve, the turn passes on.

The instant any card lands face up on the discard pile, a short real-time window opens, about 5 seconds, and every unlocked player, including whoever just discarded, may race to throw a card of the exact same rank from their hand onto it.

Hit it and your card leaves your hand. The pile also seals: nobody may draw from it until the start of the next turn. Match a special card onto a special card and both abilities trigger (section 07).

Miss with a wrong-rank card and it comes straight back, and you immediately draw a penalty card. The window stays open for everyone, and you may even try again with a different card.

Pass and it’s final for that window; no changing your mind. The window closes when someone hits, everyone has passed, or time runs out.

Two edges worth knowing: match away your last card and you’ve automatically called Check (section 08). Balloon to eight cards through penalties and you’re disqualified: locked out of the round, your hand still scored, no way to win. If disqualifications ever leave fewer than two active players with no Check in progress, the round simply ends.

Discarding a King, Queen, or Jack, on your turn or as a match, triggers its ability:

• King: peek at any two cards on the table, then swap any one card with any other.
• Queen: peek at any one card, then swap any one card with any other.
• Jack: no peek, straight to the swap.

Both stages are optional: skip the peek, skip the swap, or let the whole thing go. Peeking isn’t invisible: everyone sees which positions you peek at; only you see the faces.

When a special is matched onto another special, both abilities stack and resolve last-in, first-out. Alice discards a King; Bob matches it with his own. Bob’s King resolves first, then Alice’s.

Convinced your total is the lowest at the table? On your turn, with nothing else pending and final turns not already underway, call “Check.”

Your turn ends instantly and you’re locked: no more turns, no matching, and your cards can’t be touched by anyone’s abilities.

Everyone else now gets exactly one last turn, played under the full rules: matching windows, abilities, all of it. Nobody else may call Check during final turns.

And if a match ever empties your hand outright, that’s an automatic Check: same lock, same final turns for everyone else.

After final turns, every hand flips face up and the totals are counted, aces still −1. Lowest total wins. A tie is shared: all tied players win. The game is a single round.

The draw pile runs dry

The discard pile’s top card stays put; everything beneath it shuffles into a fresh face-down draw pile.

Nothing left to draw anywhere

If a draw is required, a penalty for example, and neither pile can provide even after reshuffling, the game ends on the spot and hands are scored as they lie.

Fizzled abilities

If your ability’s turn on the stack comes up but you’re locked, it fizzles: removed with no effect.