Pig (card game)

Pig is a simple card game of collecting matched sets that originated in America in the early twentieth century, suited to anywhere from three to thirteen players though four to seven is considered the most enjoyable range, and played with a standard fifty-two card French-suited deck. Each player is dealt four cards and the goal is to be the first to collect a full book of four cards sharing the same rank; players simultaneously and continuously pass one unwanted card at a time to the player on their left, so that every hand always holds exactly four cards as play proceeds around the table. The moment a player completes a book they perform a quiet, prearranged signal, most often touching a finger to their nose, without announcing it aloud; other players race to copy the signal as soon as they notice, and whoever is last to do so becomes the pig and loses the round. The game is considered to descend from an older card game called Vive l'Amour, and it has produced well known variant forms including Donkey, which substitutes grabbing a pile of objects such as chips for the nose touch, Spoons, which uses one fewer spoon than there are players, and Tongue, in which the completing player instead sticks out their tongue.