Pick-up Sticks rules: how to play, and how Mikado scoring works

The rules of Pick-up Sticks

Hold the bundle upright on the table and let go. The sticks fall into a heap, and that heap is the whole board. From then on you take turns drawing sticks out of it, one at a time, without disturbing anything else.

• Take one stick at a time. Press it and pull it straight along its own length, either direction, until it is clear of the pile.
• Get it out cleanly and you go again. A good turn is a long turn; players regularly clear half the heap in one go.
• Move any other stick and your turn is over. The stick you were pulling goes back where it was, and the next player takes over the heap exactly as you left it.
• Pull straight. Lever, roll or lift a stick out and you have moved the pile even if nothing visibly shifted — the pull has to follow the line the stick already lies on.
• The pile is finished when the last stick is out. Most points wins, not most sticks.

Nothing in that list is hard to understand, which is the point. The whole game lives in one judgement made over and over: is this stick free, and am I sure enough to pull it?

The sticks and what they are worth

A standard Mikado set is 41 sticks in five ranks, and you can read the rank off the stick: the more bands it carries, the more it is worth.

Half the points in the pile sit in the eleven highest sticks, which is why counting sticks is a poor guide to who is winning. Seven kuli are worth fourteen; one mandarin is worth ten and takes the same single clean pull.

What counts as a foul

Every argument about pick-up sticks is really an argument about this one word: moved. The workable definition, and the one the game here enforces, is anything lying across the path your stick has to travel.

• A stick resting on top of yours anywhere along it will be lifted or dragged. Foul.
• A stick crossing the empty space your stick must slide through on its way out — not where it lies now, but where it is going. Foul.
• A stick merely touching yours end to end, or lying under it without weight on it, is usually fine. The pull tells you.

House rules vary on the edges of this, and it is worth settling two of them before you drop the bundle: whether a stick that quivers without changing position ends the turn, and whether you may steady the pile with your other hand (the usual answer is no).

The mikado, and the rules people add

The black-and-gold stick is worth 20 on its own, and most sets give whoever holds it a small standing advantage for the rest of the game. Which advantage is the one real variant in the game:

• The mikado as a tool — the classic rule. The holder may use the mikado itself to lever and tease other sticks out of the pile, which turns a scoring stick into an instrument.
• The forgiven slip — the version played here: the holder's first slip of each turn is forgiven, so a long turn can survive one mistake.
• Nothing at all — plain scoring. Cleanest for tournaments, and for anyone who resents the runaway-leader problem.

All three do the same job — they make the mikado worth chasing early, while the heap is still tangled and the stick is still on top of it. A mikado taken on the first turn tends to decide the game; a mikado still in the pile at the end is just twenty points lying in the open.

Other rules worth agreeing first

• Who drops the bundle — usually the player who is not going first, since the dropper has a moment's advantage in seeing how it lands.
• Two hands or one. One is standard.
• Solo play. Clear the whole pile and score it; a fouled pull costs a stick's worth of points rather than a turn.

Common questions