How to Play Pope Joan

By Jaques of London · Est. 1795 · Updated 2026-08-17

Pope Joan is a trick-and-run card game for three to eight players that combines the card-shedding excitement of a stop game with a gambling pool mechanic. Players build ascending sequences in suits, racing to empty their hand while snatching chips from a decorated pool board whenever they hold the right card.

It rewards card sense over luck, scales well across a wide age range, and plays noisily around a kitchen table or quietly as a family game after dinner. The pool board means there is always something at stake on every single card played.

A little history

Pope Joan is traditionally held to be of British and Scottish origin and was certainly well established as a parlour game by the eighteenth century, appearing in references and gaming manuals from the 1700s onward. The name is widely thought to derive from a medieval legend of a female pope, though the precise link between legend and card game is unclear. A purpose-made circular wooden board with labelled compartments for the pools was the standard equipment in Victorian households, and these boards are still made and sold today. The game belongs to the same family as the older French game Nain Jaune and shares structural similarities with Newmarket.

Setting up

1. Remove the eight of diamonds from the deck permanently. It plays no part in the game.
2. Place the pool board in the centre of the table, or arrange eight labelled sections: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Pope Joan (nine of diamonds), Game, Matrimony, and Intrigue.
3. Agree a chip denomination. Each player begins with an equal stack; 30 chips each is a workable starting point.
4. Before each deal, the dealer dresses the board by placing chips from their own stack: 2 chips each on Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and Pope Joan; 6 chips on Matrimony; 4 chips on Intrigue; 1 chip on Game.
5. Deal all cards one at a time, face down, starting left of dealer. Deal one extra hand face down as a spare (the 'widow'). It does not matter if hands are unequal; the spare hand takes cards first if the deal does not divide evenly.
6. After dealing, the dealer may look at the widow and swap it for their own hand if they wish. They may not look at both and keep their original; once they look at the widow the swap is binding. Alternatively the dealer may auction the widow to the highest bidder; agree which rule applies before starting.

How to play

1. The player to the left of the dealer leads first. They may play any card they choose, announcing its rank and suit aloud.
2. Whoever holds the next card up in the same suit plays it immediately, announcing it. This continues up the suit until either the ace is reached or no one can continue (a stop).
3. A stop occurs when the next card in sequence is the missing eight of diamonds, is in the widow, or simply does not exist in that suit for the cards dealt. The player who played the last card before the stop starts a fresh sequence with any card from their hand.
4. Whenever a player plays the ace, king, queen, or jack of any suit, they collect all the chips in the matching pool on the board.
5. Whenever a player plays the nine of diamonds (Pope Joan), they collect all the chips from the Pope Joan pool. No further card is played in that sequence; the player who holds Pope Joan always causes a stop, then starts afresh.
6. Matrimony: if the same player plays the king and queen of diamonds in the same game, they collect the Matrimony pool. The pair need not be consecutive; they just both need to have been played by the same player.
7. Intrigue: if the same player plays the queen and jack of diamonds in the same game, they collect the Intrigue pool.
8. The round ends when any player plays their last card. That player wins the Game pool.
9. The winning player also collects one chip from every other player for each card remaining in their hand. Players who still hold Pope Joan (nine of diamonds) pay double for it.
10. Any pools not won in a round are left on the board and accumulate across subsequent rounds. The dealer for the next round dresses the board again on top of whatever remains.

Winning and scoring

There is no single winner of the whole session in the traditional format; players simply accumulate or lose chips over an agreed number of rounds or a set time. The player with the most chips when play ends wins. For a defined-end game, agree a fixed number of deals (a multiple of the player count so each player deals equally) before you start. Some families play to a target chip total instead. The Game pool, worth one chip per remaining card in opponents' hands, means that going out fast is always worthwhile even if the special pools have already been claimed.

The fine points

The most common dispute concerns the Matrimony and Intrigue pools when the relevant diamonds cards are in the widow. If the king, queen, or jack of diamonds ends up in the unplayed widow, those pools simply accumulate to the next round. Pope Joan in the widow is treated the same way: the pool carries forward. Some house rules allow the dealer to win the Pope Joan pool if it sits in the widow they have swapped into and held, but this should be agreed before play begins rather than argued afterwards.

A second frequent question is whether a player must play their card when they hold the next in sequence. The strict rule is yes: you must play if you can continue a sequence in progress. Concealing a card to manufacture a stop is not permitted. If a player is caught holding a card they should have played, a standard penalty is to pay one chip to each other player and to forfeit any pool they might have claimed with that card. Settle on your penalty house rule before the first deal.

How to win more often

• Lead low cards early in a suit to push the sequence toward your high cards, especially if you hold a king or queen of diamonds and want to try for Matrimony or Intrigue.
• Track which stop cards have appeared. Once you know the seven of diamonds has been played, a sequence through that suit will run freely, which changes when to burn a lead.
• Hoard the nine of diamonds (Pope Joan) until a sequence naturally reaches it rather than leading into it deliberately. Other players cannot stop the run once it arrives at nine of diamonds, and you collect the pool without competition.
• Keep your hand small. The Game pool plus the per-card payments from opponents frequently outweigh a single special pool, so getting out fast is rarely wrong.
• When you have the choice of which suit to lead after a stop, pick the suit where you hold a cluster of consecutive cards. Consecutive cards in one suit let you play several in a row and reduce your hand rapidly.

Variations

Auction Widow

Instead of the dealer having the right to swap with the widow privately, the widow is auctioned face down after the deal. The highest bidder pays their bid into the Game pool and swaps their hand for the widow. This adds a small bluffing element and means the Game pool starts richer each round.

Stripped-Deck Pope Joan

For younger players or a faster game, remove all cards below six as well as the eight of diamonds. This shortens runs dramatically, produces more stops, and means the game plays out in roughly half the time. Adjust chip values downward to keep the economy balanced.

No-Board Pope Joan

Where no pool board is available, eight small piles of coins or labelled slips of paper serve the same purpose. Each pile is named and treated identically to a board compartment. This is the most common way the game is played informally and works perfectly well for casual sessions.

Fixed-Pool Values

Some families set fixed pool sizes and discard any chips that overflow rather than letting pools accumulate. This keeps the game length predictable and prevents a single lucky Matrimony or Pope Joan card from dominating an entire session. Under this rule, unclaimed pools are simply removed from the board at the end of each round rather than carried forward.

Pope Joan: frequently asked questions