How to Play

Cheat is a fast-paced bluffing game. Play cards face-down, announce a rank in sequence, and bluff freely. Catch a liar and they take the pile; accuse wrongly and you take it instead.

Cheat (also called I Doubt It, Bullshit or B.S., and by various names like Mogeln or Menteur across Europe) is the classic social bluffing card game. Players race to empty their hand by playing cards face-down to a central pile and announcing their rank, but the announcement does not have to be true. Any player may call 'Cheat!' to challenge; the claim is revealed and whoever is wrong (the liar or the false accuser) takes the entire pile. The game is nearly pure social deduction: hand strength barely matters, but reading faces, timing, and managing your reputation for honesty decide who wins.

Players

Cheat is played by 3 to 10 players. Four to six players is the sweet spot; fewer and there are too few challengers, more and individual turns come around too slowly. For 6 to 10 players, shuffle two 52-card decks together to keep hand sizes manageable.

Card Deck

Use a standard 52-card deck (remove Jokers). For 6+ players, combine two decks. There are no special card values in Cheat; only the rank of each card matters for the announcement, and ranks run Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King in fixed sequential order. Suits are irrelevant; only the rank is claimed or verified.

Objective

Be the first player to empty your hand by playing cards face-down to the centre pile. You win even if your final play is a bluff, as long as no one successfully challenges it.

Setup and Deal

1. Pick a first dealer by any method (cut the deck, the youngest player, volunteer).
2. Shuffle the deck(s) thoroughly. Deal all cards one at a time clockwise until the deck is empty. Some players may end up with one more card than others; this is fine.
3. Players pick up and sort their hands.
4. Place nothing in the centre to start; the first player's play creates the pile.
5. The player to the dealer's left plays first, claiming Aces.

Gameplay

1. Your turn: Play 1, 2, 3 or 4 cards face-down on the centre pile and announce how many cards you are playing and their rank ('three Aces', 'two 7s', 'one King'). You do not show the cards.
2. The required rank: The rank you claim must be the next rank in the rising sequence. Player 1 claims Aces, Player 2 claims 2s, Player 3 claims 3s, and so on up through Kings, then back to Aces and repeating.
3. Bluffing: The cards you actually play need not match what you announce. You may play any cards from your hand; the announcement only needs to be the correct rank and an honest-sounding quantity (1 to 4).
4. Challenging: As soon as any player places cards and makes the claim (and before the next player begins their turn), any other player may call out 'Cheat!' (or 'Bullshit!', 'I Doubt It!', whichever name your group uses). Multiple players may call simultaneously; the first shout counts.
5. Resolving the challenge: Flip over the cards just played. If every card matches the claimed rank, the challenger was wrong and must pick up the entire centre pile into their hand. If any card does not match, the player who made the claim was bluffing and must pick up the entire centre pile instead.
6. No challenge: If no one calls Cheat before the next player begins, the claim is locked and the cards stay face-down in the pile. The next player takes their turn with the next rank in sequence.
7. Passing: In strict rules you MUST play at least one card on your turn (bluffing if necessary). In house variations, a player may pass if all cards of the required rank have already demonstrably been played; some groups only allow passing with unanimous consent.
8. Running out mid-pile: If the rank sequence passes through all 13 ranks and cycles back, keep going; there is no special handling of the King-Ace transition.

Scoring

• Cheat has no point scoring. Each round has a single winner: the first player to successfully empty their hand (with no pending successful challenge against their final play).
• Final-play rule: If a player's emptying play is challenged and proves a bluff, they pick up the pile and are back in the game. If the challenger is wrong, the player still wins.
• Multi-round match (optional): Track wins across rounds. First player to win 3 rounds, or the player with the most wins after a set number of rounds, wins the match.
• Penalty scoring (optional): Count the cards each loser is holding when someone goes out; lowest cumulative over a match wins.

Winning

The first player to empty their hand (and survive any challenge on their final play) wins the round. Matches are typically a best-of-three or best-of-five of rounds, or whoever has the fewest cards stuck to them over a fixed number of rounds.

Common Variations

• Free-choice Cheat: The player of each turn chooses their own rank rather than following the Ace-2-3 sequence. Allows targeted bluffing but slows challenging.
• Challenge window extended: Any previous claim can be challenged until the next-next turn begins, not just immediately. Rewards card-counting and punishes lazy bluffs.
• Jokers as wilds: Include 2 Jokers; a Joker in a face-down play counts as the claimed rank no matter what. Rewards holders of Jokers; a challenged play with a Joker in it is a winning play for the claimer.
• Strip Cheat: Party version where losers of each challenge remove a piece of clothing instead of picking up the pile. (Adult-only.)
• Liar Dice adaptation: Replace cards with dice; claim poker-hand rankings of 5 hidden dice rather than card ranks.
• Fixed hand Cheat: Deal 7 cards each and use a stock pile for drawing; both losing a challenge and passing require drawing cards from stock.

Tips and Strategy

• Count Kings and Aces, the rarest ranks to have naturally because there are only four of each. A player claiming 'four Aces' late in the game is almost always bluffing because most Aces will already have been played.
• Play honestly early to build a reputation as a straight player, then use that reputation to land a critical four-card bluff when your hand is nearly empty.
• Challenge players who play three or four cards at once. The mathematical likelihood of holding 3 or 4 cards of the same rank at the right moment is low; big plays are usually bluffs.
• Pay attention to the pile size before your turn. A pile of 20+ cards is devastating to pick up; challenge more conservatively when the pile is huge and more aggressively when it is small.
• Do not always challenge; a good Cheat player chooses their moments. Reputation for restraint makes your rare challenges more feared.
• On your final play, prefer an honest claim if possible. Bluffing on your last card invites every other player to challenge since the stakes are maximal.

Glossary

• Cheat (the call): The challenge shout that interrupts a claim and forces a reveal of the just-played cards.
• Pile: The growing face-down stack in the centre of the table where played cards accumulate.
• Rank sequence: The Ace-2-3-...-K-Ace cycle that determines what claim each player must make.
• Bluff: Playing cards that do not match the claimed rank.
• Claim: The spoken announcement of quantity and rank a player makes when playing cards.
• Going out: Emptying one's hand, the win condition, subject to the final-play challenge rule.