How many players can play a memory game?

At a table any number can, taking turns round the circle. This version supports one or two players on one device, which covers the great majority of how the game is actually played.

What happens if both players tie?

On the 4 × 4, 5 × 4 and 6 × 6 boards an even split is possible and the game is declared a tie. The 6 × 5 board has fifteen pairs, an odd number, so it can never end level.

Do the cards get shuffled during a memory game?

Never. Once the grid is dealt, no card moves for the rest of the game — which is the entire reason remembering where something was is worth anything at all.

Is a memory game good for your memory?

It exercises visuospatial working memory directly, and you will measurably improve at this game. Evidence that such practice transfers to unrelated memory tasks is much weaker, so play it because it is a good game.

How to Play Memory Match

Lay every card face down, with two of each shape. On your turn, turn one card over and then a second. If the shapes agree, the pair stays up and — with two players — you score a point and go again. If they do not, both cards turn back down where they were and the turn passes. Clear the whole grid to finish.

The rules, step by step

1Deal the grid face downEvery card is placed face down and each shape is on exactly two of them, so the number of cards is always even.
2Turn one card overClick, tap or press Enter on any face-down card. Its shape is now visible to everybody at the table, and it stays visible until the turn ends.
3Turn a second card — and only a secondA turn is exactly two cards. While the second one is face up the board is locked, so no third card can be turned until the pair has been judged.
4Keep a pair, or put both backIf the two shapes agree the pair stays face up and is out of play. If they do not, both cards go back down in exactly the places they came from.
5The player who matches goes againIn the two-player game a matched pair scores one point and the same player takes the next turn. A miss hands the turn to the other player.
6Clear the board to finishThe game ends when the last pair is taken. One player is scored on turns taken plus one for each hint; two players are scored on pairs won.

Try it — the rules above, running

Turns0Pairs0/8Time0:00Hints0Deal#0

New board deals a fresh grid at the size and player count you last chose, and Hint opens one matching pair for a moment and adds a turn to your score. While two cards are face up — or a hint is showing — the next press dismisses it rather than turning a card over, so hurrying the board along can never flip a card you did not mean to. The three-dot menu holds the one- or two-player switch, the board size and the shape names.

Your statistics · 4 × 4 · one player

Played: 0
Won: 0
Win rate: 0%
Streak: 0
Best streak: 0
Best time: —

Fewest moves is your best score on this board: turns taken plus one for every hint. A perfect game is 8. Two-player games are scored on screen and are not recorded here.

This board

Sixteen cards, eight pairs. Short enough that luck still shows — a blind opening turn pairs up about one time in fifteen — and a perfect memory clears it in around 12.4 turns against a floor of 8.

Keyboard

Arrows: Move between cards
Enter / Space: Turn the card over
H: Hint — costs one turn
N: New board
F: Full screen

What happens on a turn?

1Turn your first cardPick any card that is face down. Everyone at the table can now see it, which matters: in the two-player game you are giving information away as well as gathering it.
2Turn your second cardThe board locks the moment the second card is up. Nothing else can be turned over until the pair has been judged, which is what stops a fast player from stacking three or four cards into one turn.
3Take the pair, or put both backMatching shapes stay face up and leave the game. Non-matching cards go back down in the same squares — they never move, so what you just saw is still true next turn.
4Play on, or passWith one player the turn simply ends. With two, a match scores a point and you go again; a miss passes the device to the other player.

How do you keep score?

The two ways this game is scored
Mode	What is counted	Better is	Recorded
One player	Turns taken, plus one per hint	Lower	Best score per board size
Two players	Pairs won by each player	Higher	On screen only

A hint costs one turn because that is roughly what it is worth — it tells you what a turn spent on two unknown cards might have told you. Charging for it keeps "fewest turns" a record of how well you played rather than a record of how often you pressed the button. Two-player results are not saved: two people sharing a device are keeping score on the screen in front of them, and folding those games into one person's win rate would make the number meaningless.

Which rules do people actually disagree about?

Does a matcher go again? Almost every published set of rules says yes, and this game follows it. The variant where the turn always passes makes the two-player game much closer to a coin toss, because remembering four locations no longer pays four times.
May you turn the same card twice in one turn? No. The second card must be a different card, which is why a card already face up simply refuses the press rather than counting as a miss.
What if somebody turns a third card? At a table this is usually treated as a void turn. Here it cannot happen at all — the board does not accept a third card until the pair has been resolved.
Who starts? Player 1, always — and it is worth less than people assume. Play every deal out with two players who never forget a card and always cash a pair they already know, and Player 1 takes 46 boards in 100 on the 4 × 4 to Player 2's 43, with the rest tied. On the 6 × 5 board, where fifteen pairs mean no game can end level, it is Player 2 who is a whisker ahead, 50.5 to 49.5. Going second is not a handicap; a rematch is simply the courteous way to settle a close one.

How do you get better at a memory game?

Encode location, not appearance. The shapes are trivially distinguishable, so what you are actually storing is a grid reference, and grid references are stored far better as a short verbal label ("crown, row three, far right") than as a picture. Turn cards in a readable order so that the board becomes a handful of short rows rather than 36 arbitrary points, and rehearse: silently repeating the last two squares you saw while you decide on the next one is what keeps them available two turns later. If you want the same skill in a game with a different shape to it, Mahjong Solitaire rewards exactly the same kind of board reading.

How do you win more often?

Remember places, not picturesThe shapes are easy and the coordinates are hard, so encode the square rather than the symbol: "star, bottom left corner" survives four more turns than "there was a star somewhere". Naming the row and column as you turn a card is the single cheapest improvement available.
When you know nothing, open two cards you have never seenA turn spent on one new card and one you already know teaches you one thing; two new cards teach you two and can still pair up by luck. That is exactly the strategy measured at 12.4 turns on the 4 × 4 board and 28.5 on the 6 × 6, and it beats any strategy that re-checks cards it has already seen.
Cash a known pair immediatelyIf you can already name two squares with the same shape, take them before doing anything else — in the two-player game the turn continues afterwards, so every known pair you bank is a free look at two more cards and your opponent never gets the chance to take it from you.
Choose your second card to give away the leastIn a two-player game a miss hands the opponent both of the cards you just showed plus the turn. When your first card does not match anything you know, prefer a second card in a region you have already half-mapped, so the information you leak is information your opponent mostly had anyway.
Work the board in rows, not at randomTurning cards in a readable order — left to right along a row, then the next row — turns a grid of 36 arbitrary positions into four or six short lists, and short lists are what working memory is actually good at holding. Scattered sampling costs you pairs you genuinely saw.
On the big board, the last four pairs are nearly freeBy the time eight cards are left you have almost certainly seen every one of them, so the endgame collapses: a player who remembers everything clears the final four pairs of a 6 × 6 board in 4.2 turns against a floor of 4. The game is therefore decided in its middle, and in the two-player game the player who is behind with eight cards left has less time to recover than the score suggests.

Common questions about memory match

How many players can play a memory game?: At a table any number can, taking turns round the circle. This version supports one or two players on one device, which covers the great majority of how the game is actually played.
What happens if both players tie?: On the 4 × 4, 5 × 4 and 6 × 6 boards an even split is possible and the game is declared a tie. The 6 × 5 board has fifteen pairs, an odd number, so it can never end level.
Do the cards get shuffled during a memory game?: Never. Once the grid is dealt, no card moves for the rest of the game — which is the entire reason remembering where something was is worth anything at all.
Is a memory game good for your memory?: It exercises visuospatial working memory directly, and you will measurably improve at this game. Evidence that such practice transfers to unrelated memory tasks is much weaker, so play it because it is a good game.

Ready to stop reading? Play memory match on the full board, with controls and statistics tailored to that game.