Five Crowns is a rummy-based game, and as such, the scoring can get a little confusing at times.
Luckily for you, we love this game and want to help with an overview of Five Crowns scoring as well as our completely FREE and downloadable Five Crowns score sheet.
Going through this article and downloading this sheet will help you be fully prepared to add this game to your game night and have a ton of fun along the way!
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From A to Z, we’ll help you make this fun and easy game a part of your regular rotation.
Table of Contents
How To Win Five Crowns
To know what you’re points are working toward, you need to know how to win the game.
Five Crowns plays out over 11 rounds of increasingly large hands.
At the end of each hand, players count up their unmatched cards and track those points.
These points count against you.
The player with the fewest points at the end of the 13th round (with the Kings as wild cards) is the winner!
It’s in your best interest to match up cards by making either groups of the same rank or runs in the same suit with a total of three or more.
Matches of the same rank are called sets. An example would be a set of 3 Jacks.
Runs or straights are consecutive cards in the same suit. An example is four, five, and six of spades.
Both sets and runs can be larger than three, but they must be at least three to count as matched and not count against you at the end.
You hold onto all of your cards until you or someone else has all the cards in your hand matched.
Then, you lay them down.
Everyone else gets one more turn to draw and match what they can.
Everyone plays what they can and then counts up the total number of their unmatched points to track on the score sheet.
If you don’t have any unmatched cards, you get zero for that round, and your score stays the same as the previous one.
If you have points, the scorekeeper tracks it on the sheet and adds it to the previous total.
This is where the score sheet and scoring guide come in (these are in the next sections).
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Five Crowns Score Sheet
Download the score sheet here.
There is one page for playing with 2-4 players and two pages for tracking when you play with 5-7 players.
Print off what you need (all FREE). If you think it’s helpful, please share this link and the pages with your friends!
Five Crowns Scoring Breakdown & Table
At their base levels, all cards are worth their value.
For example, a three card is worth 3 points. A seven card is worth 7 points.
Jacks are worth 11, Queens are 12, and Kings are 13.
Jokers (permanent wilds) are worth 50 points to the bad, but since these almost always play, you’ll rarely see this count against you.
I say base level because for every round of the game, the hand wild changes.
In the first hand, you deal out three cards and THREEs are now wild.
As such, if these aren’t matched they count against you for the “hand wild” amount of points.
These are 20 points against you.
Like Jokers, since you’ll almost always be able to throw them in to another match, they’ll rarely count against you.
After all, there is no limit to how you can use wilds as long as they have another regular card to go with them.
This is just for those rare instances when none of your cards match at all and you only have one wild.
For quick reference, use this Five Crowns scoring table to see what all the points are worth:
| Card Rank | Point Value |
|---|---|
| Three | 3 |
| Four | 4 |
| Five | 5 |
| Six | 6 |
| Seven | 7 |
| Eight | 8 |
| Nine | 9 |
| Ten | 10 |
| Jack | 11 |
| Queen | 12 |
| King | 13 |
| Jokers (Wild) | 50 |
| Hand Wild (rotates for each hand) | 20 |
Commonly Asked Five Crowns Scoring Questions
Why Does Five Crowns Have Five Suits?
This is a tough one to answer. Officially, using two 58-card decks with an extra suit allows for faster gameplay and helps you include more players.
Using a standard 52-card deck for rummy games does limit the number of players you can have.
I believe unofficially; it’s a marketing device by the designer. By adding a fifth suit, you make it more difficult to play the game using two 52-card decks.
To be clear, I don’t think this is a bad thing; it’s kind of genius on their part.
It is possible to play Five Crowns with regular cards, though it takes a bit of extra setup.
For more on that, check out our Five Crowns with regular cards rules guide.
Can You Discard A Joker In Five Crowns?
Yes, you can discard a Joker in Five Crowns. If someone makes a mistake and discards it, the next player may pick it up and use it.
Strategically, the only reason you’d WANT to discard it is if you have no matches to make at all, and it’s the last turn.
It’ll count 50 points against you if it’s in your hand, so get it out of there!
Are There Aces In Five Crowns?
There are no ACES or TWOS in the game of Five Crowns. When playing with regular cards, Aces take the place of Jokers and are permanently wild. Twos don’t have any role in this game.
Do You Use Both Decks In Five Crowns?
You’ll notice that your game comes with two decks of 58 cards.
The decks consist of five suits with cards from 3 to King and three Jokers in each (six total).
Traditionally, the game is played with both decks, meaning that there are 10 of each normal card in the deck.
The abundance of cards makes each round go fairly quickly. However, if playing with fewer than 5 players and you want a challenge, try playing with only one deck.
This will make the game slow down, and it’ll be harder to make books or matches.
But some people like the challenge.
This also throws the game balance to more strategy-based than luck-based, like the original.
