Play Racing Demon Online

What is Racing Demon?

Racing Demon is the British name for Peanut, a real-time multiplayer solitaire card game known in America as Nerts. It descends from the Victorian-era single-player game Demon Patience (called Canfield in the US): same 13-card reserve pile, but now every player races to clear theirs at the same time onto shared foundations.

Peanutroom.com is the free online version that plays by the classic Racing Demon rules: 2 to 8 players, simultaneous play, first to empty their pile ends the round.

Racing Demon rules

• Setup. Each player deals a 10-card demon pile (top card face up) and 5 Klondike-style work columns (1 to 5 cards, only the top card of each face up). The rest of the deck is your stock. The classic pencil-and-paper Racing Demon uses 13 cards in the demon pile; this online version uses the faster 10-card variant.
• Foundations. Four shared piles in the middle, one per suit, built up from Ace to King.
• Tableau. Build down in alternating colors on your 5 work columns.
• Stock. Flip cards (by 1 or by 3, house rules vary) to find playable cards.
• Ending a round. Empty your demon pile, call "Racing Demon!" (or "Nerts!" or "Peanut!"), and the round stops.
• Score. +1 for each card played onto a foundation, -2 for each card left in your demon pile.

See full rules.

Where does Racing Demon come from?

Racing Demon appears in British card game compilations from the early 1900s, but oral tradition places it in the late Victorian era (1880s - 1900). British card-game author Mary Whitmore Jones documented competitive patience games in the 1890s. When the game crossed to America in the early 1900s, it picked up the name Nerts (from 1920s slang for "nuts!").

Read the full history of the game.

Also known as

• Nerts
• Nertz
• Pounce
• Peanut
• History of the game