How to Play the Help Your Neighbour Card Game

A few weeks ago I covered the dice game Help Your Neighbour. This week I’m covering the Help Your Neighbour Card game. They have some similarities but I felt that they were different enough to each get their own posts.

The card game is easy to play and players of ages will love this game. The name comes from your neighbour being able to gain from your misfortune.

As well as being similar to the dice game of the same name, this game is a good fit for games like Play or Pay, Wichita, and the Garbage card game.

Let’s get into how to play the Help Your Neighbour card game, the rules, how to win and some variations.

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What you Need for Help Your Neighbour Card Game

First, this game is loved by many and someone created a commercial game by the same name. You can check it out here; Canadians here. It looks like a good game but in this post we’ll tell you how to play with regular cards.

You will need a deck of regular cards and a set of two dice. If you need some new cards, and who doesn’t?, you can shop here; Canadians here. The Bicycle Disney Dogs and Cats look pretty cool.

You could also use the Phase 10 cards as they are numbered 1 to 12 instead of using the jack and queen from a regular deck.

How to Play the Help Your Neighbour Card Game

First, separate the cards into suits. Each player gets one suit. They will then set aside the ace and king cards. Now, they will set the cards face up on the table in two rows of 5.

The first player will roll the dice. She will then add the dice together and turn over the card that matches the sum. For example, if she rolls a 3 and 5 she would flip over the 8 card. She will then reroll the dice and do the same as before.

 If she rolls a number that she already has flipped over, her turn is over and the dice go to the next player who has that number still face up. That player can now flip over that card and take a turn rolling the dice and flipping over cards.

When a player rolls a sum of seven, not only is their turn over, but they must choose a card to flip back over so that it is face up.

Winning Help your Neighbour Card Game

The first player to have all their cards flipped face down is the winner.

Help Your Neighbour Chips Variation

For this game variation, you will need the cards, dice and 15 poker chips for each player. The game is played the same with the difference being in the chips. To start, each player puts a chip into the middle. Every time that a player rolls a 7, they need to put a chip into the pot. The winner of the round wins all of the chips in the pot.

A new round begins with everyone putting a chip into the middle and play continues. If you run out of chips then you are out of the game.

The winner is the player who wins all of the chips or has the most chips at the end of an agreed upon time or set amount of rounds.

Helping Hands

The Help Your Neighbour card game is an easy to learn game that players of all ages will love playing. We like to play with the chips to make the game last a little longer. Get the printable rules here.

For more fun games check out the card games Play or Pay, Wichita, and Fe Fi Fo Fum. Be sure to check out our Family Game Shelf shop where you’ll find tons of fun with seasonal and original games like the Sticks card game and our Whacky Putt mini golf dice game.