How to Play Pay Your Dues
Description
A game of accumulating debt and real-time nerve. Face cards load your debt counter, Aces wipe everyone else's — and whoever's carrying the most after every flip pays up immediately.
Objective
Avoid carrying the highest debt on the table when the flip lands.
Setup
Deal the full deck evenly across all players; any remainder is discarded unseen. Everyone holds their cards face down in a row, unlooked at.
Every player's debt counter starts at zero, visible to the whole table.
Rules
Each round opens with a countdown. During it, any player may voluntarily pay a forfeit to reduce their own debt by one.
When the timer ends, everyone flips their next card simultaneously.
Jack adds 1 debt, Queen adds 2, King adds 3, number cards do nothing. An Ace wipes every other player's debt to zero while the flipper's own debt stays intact.
Winning
After every simultaneous flip, whoever carries the highest debt pays a forfeit immediately — all of them, if it's a tie. If nobody has any debt, the whole table pays.
The game ends once every card has been flipped. There is no final score — the forfeits happen as you go.