The best two person card games are ones that have a balance of difficulty, luck, and time investment required. Check out our favorite two-person card games below! We have short explanations for each, plus a summary of time to play and cost!
Card games are a great at-home date night idea. These are affordable to purchase for yourself or they are great to ask for as a gift. They usually don’t require a lot of setup or clean-up and don’t take too long to play or to learn. Even if you’re not playing the game with a significant other, these games can be great relationship-building tools.
Check out our other ideas in family forging for building strong relationships!
Consider purchasing two person card games for yourself, friends, and family, or as housewarming or wedding gifts!
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, The Homesmiths will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.
Sometimes finding two-person card games is difficult because it seems that most games require 4 or more players. All of the games listed below can be played with as few as two players and some of them can be played with up to 8 players!
Each of our suggestions will include a summary of the game, the length of time it takes to play, the difficulty of learning, and its portability! These are all factors that we consider when we want to purchase a new game.
The Best Two Person Card Games:
Monopoly Deal:
The goal of this game is to collect 3 sets of property before your opponent. There are cards in addition to the properties that allow you to sabotage your opponent, steal from them, or give you extra cards! There’s even a Harry Potter Version!
Difficulty to learn: Easy! The game is recommended for 8 years and up.
Length of time to play: 15 minutes for 2 people (but you can play it with up to 5 people, which can take closer to 45 minutes!
Portability: Medium. This game is portable if you’re going to someplace that will have table space for you and your opponent to lay down cards as you play. It’s easy to set up and clean up though!
Cost: Less than $10
Get Monopoly Deal on Amazon! Or get a Harry Potter Monopoly Deal!
Skip-Bo
The goal of this game is to get rid of your stockpile of cards by stacking numbers sequentially.
Difficulty to learn: Easy! This game is recommended for 7 years or older
Length of time to play: About 30 minutes, but that time goes up with more people playing. This game can be played with up to 6 people!
Portability: Medium-Hard. This game requires more space than some of the other card games, so it’s great if you’re going someplace with a large table or where you aren’t trying to get food on and off the table.
Cost: Less than $15
Phase 10
Phase 10 is similar to Rummy. There are ten phases that you are trying to complete before your opponent.
Difficulty to learn: Easy! The game is recommended for ages 7 and up.
Length of time to play: About 30 minutes, but that time goes up with more people playing. This game can be played with 7 or more people!
Portability: Easy! When you lay down your phase, the cards take up a bit of room, but it’s not too much that you can’t shuffle around. It cleans up quickly and the one we found even has a portable storage tin!
Cost: Less than $15!
Quiddler:
Quiddler is an easy and quick game where you try to get rid of the cards in your hand by forming words. You get points for your words and there are bonuses.
Difficulty to learn: Easy! This game is meant for ages 8 and up.
Length of time to play: About 30 minutes. This game can be played with up to 8 people so it does take longer the more people there are playing.
Portability: Easy. This game requires minimal space to play and is very easy to set up and clean up anywhere.
Cost: Less than $15.
Dutch Blitz
If you’ve never heard of or played this game, we cannot recommend it enough. It’s a very fast-paced game that requires you to get rid of your stockpile of cards before your opponents while stacking the cards sequentially and by color.
Difficulty to learn: Easy! This game is recommended for people 8 years and older. The concept of the game is very simple, but it may take a few rounds to get used to the speed.
Length of time to play: 5-10 minutes per round. But you can play as many rounds as you want to!
Portability: Medium-Hard. This game can be taken to other people’s houses to play but we wouldn’t recommend it for a restaurant, coffee shop, etc. It requires more space than the other games and as you play, everyone’s volume naturally increases!
Cost: Less than $15!
Get Dutch Blitz on Amazon! You can also get an expansion pack to be able to play with up to 8 players!
Jaipur
This game requires luck and strategy to win. The goal is to get the most points from trading goods. This game is designed exclusively for 2 players.
Difficulty to learn: Easy! This game is for people 10 years and older.
Length of time to play: 30 minutes or less.
Portability: Easy! We take this game with us when we go to coffee shops. Learn it at home first so you can get used to the set up, but it’s not hard to set up and doesn’t take up too much space.
Cost: $20-$30 depending on sales.
7 Wonders Duel
7 Wonders Duel is an intense card game based in the Ancient world. You try to win victory points in several different categories in order to have more than your opponent.
Difficulty to learn: Hard. This game is meant for people aged 10 and up. We found the instructions to be difficult to understand so we had to watch several videos online in order to learn how to play.
Length of time to play: 30 minutes or more. The first couple of times you play this, it will take longer than 30 minutes.
Portability: Hard. This game, although we would classify it as a card game, has a lot of extra parts. This is not a game that we take with us placed.
Cost: $20-$35 depending on sales
Get 7 Wonders Duel on Amazon. There are also expansion packs!
Rivals for Catan
Rivals for Catan adapts the traditional Catan board game into a two-player player card game. The themes and goals are the same as the board game, but you don’t need to be familiar with the board game to play this version.
Difficulty to learn: Medium. This game is designed for people ages 10 and older. It has more rules and steps than some of the other card games we recommend.
Length of time to play: 45-60 minutes. This is not a shortened version of Settlers for Catan, it takes just as long to play.
Portability: Hard. This game requires a large amount of space to set up and play.
Cost: $20-$30 depending on sales.
Get Rivals for Catan on Amazon! There is also an expansion pack if you like variety!
Let us know what card games you play the most and if any of them are exclusively 2-player! Don’t forget to save and share this post with friends!
Wow, what a great list of card games. I’ll save this for reference later, they sound like great gifts. I’ve played Skip Bo and Dutch Blitz and love both of them! The rest are new. Thenks for sharing!
Thank you! I hope you find the list helpful in the future too! We’ve gifted all of these before and the recipients always love them!