Kings in the Corner Card Game: Rules for How to Play

Objective

The objective of Kings in the Corner is to score 100 points by being the first player to get rid of all of your cards.

Setup

Distribute the 80 playing chips as equally as possible between all of the players. Any extra chips are returned to the box.
Remove the Jokers from the deck. Shuffle the rest of the cards and deal seven to each player starting with the player to the left of the dealer. You can look at your own cards, but shouldn’t show them to the other players.
Take the top four cards from the deck and place one in each of the tabbed stalls. You should add the cards to the stalls so the number side is visible. Do not place any cards in the King stalls. If you reveal a King you will keep it in the stall. The first player will move the King to one of the King stalls.
The remaining cards should be placed face-down over the chip pot to create the draw pile.
To start each round all of the players place one chip in the chip pot.
The player to the left of the dealer starts the first round.

How to Play Kings in the Corner

On each of your turns you will look for cards from your hand that you can play. To play a card you will look at the visible card in each of the slots in the tray.

Each card in a stall has to alternate colors. If the top card in a stall is red, the next card has to be black and vice versa.
The next card played to each stall has to be one number lower than the previous card. The cards will be placed in the following order: King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace.
Card suits do not matter when playing cards.

If you have one or more cards from your hand that you can add to one of the stalls, you can play them.

Playing a three — This stack currently has a black four as the lowest card. The current player has the three of hearts in their hand. Since it is one lower than the four and the opposite color, the player can add the three of hearts to this stack.

You will also look at the cards already played to the tray to see if you can move them to a different tray. If the bottom card in a stall can be played to another stall following the play rule above, you can move the stack of cards to the other stall. You must move all of the cards. After moving all of the cards from a stall, there should be an empty stall. You can choose any card from your hand to place in the empty stall.

On your turn you can play and move as many cards as you want. You can choose not to play/move a card even if you can (except for Kings). Should you not make any plays on your turn though, you must put one chip in the chip pot.

When you are done playing/moving cards, you will draw one card from the draw pile and add it to your hand. If you draw a King, you must immediately play it to one of the King Stalls. If you fail to draw a card, you will pay a one chip penalty to the chip pot. Play then passes to the player on your left/clockwise.

Kings

Once a card has been added to a King stall, it cannot be moved for the rest of the round.

Should you have a King in your hand or there is a King in a stall that is not a designated King stall, you must play/move the King to one of the empty King stalls. If you fail to play/move a King card and a player catches you, you must pay three chips to the chip pot.

Placing a King on the tray — The current player had a King in their hand. They play it to one of the King stalls on the board. The player could also choose to move the black Queen on the left on top of the King in order to open up a space that they could play to.

End of Round

A round ends when one of the players plays the last card from their hand. Any player that still has cards left in their hand must pay one chip to the pot for each card that they have left in their hand.

Paying chips for cards left in your hand — This player had three cards left in their hand at the end of the round. They will add three chips to the center pot.

The winner of the round takes all of the chips from the pot and counts them. They will score points equal to the number of chips they collected from the pot. Record the score. Evenly distribute the chips to the players so everyone has the same number of chips. You will then play another round.

Scoring in Kings in the Corner — There were 23 chips in the pot at the end of the round. The winner of the round scores 23 points.

Winning Kings in the Corner

The first player to score 100 points wins the game.

Kings in the Corner FAQ

If you have any questions about how to play the game, leave a comment below on this post. I will try to answer any questions asked as best and as quickly as possible.

Components

Standard Playing Card Deck (52 cards and 2 Jokers)
80 Chips
Tray
Instructions

Year: 1996 | Publisher: Jax Ltd

Genres: Card, Family

Ages: 7+ | Number of Players: 2-6 | Length of Game: 30 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: Moderate

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.