Spite and Malice

Spite and Malice, also known as Cat and Mouse, is a card game for two or more players. It is a form of competitive solitaire and has a number of variations that can be played with two or three regular decks of cards. One variation, sold by Hasbro, is called Spite and Malice; another variation, sold by Mattel, is called Skip-Bo. Another is the card game Flinch.

The deck consists of three regular playing card decks with the jokers removed (or jokers may be retained and used as wild), although the United States Playing Card Company's version of the game uses two 52-card decks. The rank of the cards is ace low and then proceeding normally up to queen, which is the highest card in the deck. Kings are wild and may substitute for any other card rank excluding ace/1. Suits have no bearing on the game.

Two or more (if too many people play, it is possible you will need to add additional standard playing card decks to your Spite and Malice deck). Usually the game is played with 2 to 4 players.

To be the first person to move all the cards in your goal pile into the playing piles, thus winning the game.

Players cut for the deal, with the highest card winning the deal, aces being high. Once a dealer is chosen, he deals 26 cards to each player (or 13 cards if a shorter game is desired). The players do not look at these cards but simply collect them into a pile (hereafter called the goal pile). Once each goal pile is dealt, the top card should be turned over by each player and placed face up on the pile.

All undealt cards are left face down in a stack placed central to all players (called the draw pile).

There are three kinds of piles in Spite and Malice.

Play starts with the dealer and goes around the table in a clockwise fashion. Each turn starts with a player drawing from the common draw pile to give himself a five-card hand. He then makes whatever plays he can until he has no more plays, and then he discards a card from his hand into his personal discard area, which ends his turn.

The best move would be to play the goal card directly on a playing pile (it would have to be an ace or a king at this point, since all four playing piles are empty at this point). If this is not possible, the player may use the cards in his hand to put cards into the playing piles and "play up" to the value of the goal card. If the player cannot do either of these things, the turn might simply consist of making a discard to one of his four discard piles.

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Wikipedia