How to play Jokers and Marbles

Jokers and Marbles — also called Pegs and Jokers — is a partnership race game played on a wooden board with five marbles each and a standard deck of cards. Two teams of two sit across from each other. The first team to get all ten of its marbles home wins.

What you need

A board with four sides, five marbles per player in four colours, and two decks of cards including the jokers. Four players, in two partnerships, sitting opposite your teammate.

The board

Each side of the board is one player's plank, and every plank has the same three landmarks. The corner hole is shared with the next side along. The come-out hole is where your marbles enter the track. Five holes before you return to your own come-out hole is your in-spot, and that is where you turn off the track into your five-hole safe zone.

The order matters and catches new players out: you reach your in-spot before you get back to where you started, not after a full extra lap.

What each card does

The backward 8 is the most useful card in the deck once you understand it. A marble that has just come out is eight holes from its own in-spot going backwards — so an 8 is often the fastest route home in the entire game.

Landing on a marble

An opponent

It goes back to their start pen. All the ground it covered is lost.

Your partner

Your partner is not killed. They are thrown forward to their own in-spot, one card from home. Landing on your partner is a gift, and doing it deliberately is one of the best plays in the game.

Your own marble

Illegal. You may not land on, or pass, your own marbles — on the track or in your safe zone.

The joker

A joker takes any of your marbles, from the start pen or from the track, and lands it on any marble in play anywhere on the board. It ignores blocking entirely. An opponent is sent home; a partner is thrown to their in-spot. You cannot target your own marbles, and you cannot use it to enter a safe zone.

Blocking

You may never pass your own marbles. You may pass your partner's and your opponents'. Because your own marbles block inside your safe zone too, the safe zone fills back to front — and a marble sitting in the first slot will block the other four until you move it along.

Rules people argue about

Families play this game differently, and most of the arguments are about the same three things: whether face cards all move 10 or move 11, 12 and 13; which cards bring a marble out; and what happens when a kicked partner's in-spot is already occupied. Our online version plays face cards as 11, 12 and 13, lets Ace, Jack, Queen, King and Joker bring a marble out, and lets a teammate on that in-spot ride the push on to their own — the "double play".

All three are switchable when you create a private room, so you can play your family's version.

How to win

Get all five of your marbles into your safe zone. Once you are home, your cards play on your partner's marbles, so nobody sits out. The game ends when both partners on a team are home.