Play
Card Games
Solitaire in its many disputed variants, plus card games you can play against strangers without owning a deck or explaining the rules.
16 sites
Where the bridge world actually plays: free tables at every hour, tournaments, and teaching rooms of remarkable patience.
- 1 hr+
Thirty-odd card games with competent bots, no accounts and nothing covering the table. The default answer to fancying a game.
- 10 min
The deck-building game that invented the genre, officially online, with a free rotating selection of kingdom cards.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Yu-Gi-Oh played manually against real opponents, with every card ever printed and no automation to hide your mistakes.
- 1 hr+
- Desktop
Competitive FreeCell with timed deals and a global ranking, which should not work as a concept and completely does.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Solitaire variants you have never heard of, with a hint button and an interface built by somebody who actually plays them.
- 10 min
- Desktop
John McLeod's encyclopedia of card game rules, covering every regional variant of everything and settling every dispute.
- 1 hr+
A virtual table with real decks you drag around by hand, for playing whatever house rules your group refuses to drop.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Spin up a private poker table and send the link round: no accounts, no downloads and no actual money involved.
- 10 min
Solitaire where you choose the shape of the tableau and the rules first, then discover whether it was ever solvable.
- 10 min
- Desktop
Clean solitaire collection with hints, statistics and daily challenges spread across a dozen different variants.
- 10 min
Daily solitaire challenges dealt from guaranteed-winnable shuffles, with a leaderboard for people who want the streak.
- 10 min
Klondike that loads in under a second, with nothing on the page except green baize and the cards.
- 2 min
Bridge, euchre, hearts and spades against bots or friends, on a table that behaves the way a real one does.
- 10 min
Uno against bots or friends, with the draw-four arguments fully intact and no cards to lose under the sofa.
- 2 min
Over a hundred solitaire variants with proper undo, statistics and card backs from 2007. Still the most complete one going.
- 10 min
How we picked these
Every entry in Detour is hand-sorted rather than scraped: filed under one category, given one to three moods, and placed in a time band for how quickly it pays off. The practical facts — cost, sign-up, sound, device and whether it is safe at a desk — are recorded per site and shown on every card, so you can rule things out before you click.
Card Games: questions
How many sites are in Card Games?
16 sites, each hand-sorted by category, mood and how long it takes to pay off.
Which of these sites are free with no sign-up?
13 of the 16 are free and need no account. None of them are paid.
Do these sites work on a phone, and are they safe for work?
10 of 16 work on a phone; the rest are desktop only. 16 are safe for work and 16 work with the sound off.