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Pirate Deal vs Monopoly Deal: What's Different, and Why We Think It's Better

By the Pirate Deal crew · November 8, 2026 · 6 min read

The same bones

If you've played Monopoly Deal, you already know how to play Pirate Deal. Both are quick card games for 2 to 5 players: draw two cards, play up to three, build sets, bank money, and use action cards to steal, swap and make people pay. In Pirate Deal, properties are treasures, sets are collections, rent is ransom and money is gold. Here's how the cards line up.

7 reasons we think Pirate Deal is better

1. Play with anyone, anywhere

Monopoly Deal needs everyone around one table. Pirate Deal doesn't: share a game code with your friends wherever they are, or jump onto a table with strangers online. iPhone and Android players meet at the same tables, and nobody has to shuffle or deal.

2. No more arguing about the rules

Every group has had the argument. Who can say no to what? Does that count as a play? Pirate Deal knows the rules, so it settles them for you. It works out every ransom, keeps track of who can still cancel an attack, and gives everyone a fair amount of time: 25 seconds to pay, 15 to answer an attack, and, in online games, 60 seconds a turn, so nobody holds the game up for long.

3. Two new cards

Safe Harbour protects you until your next turn: rivals can't steal from you, swap with you or make you pay. Poseidon's Blessing gives you a whole extra turn when this one ends. Both give you a way to fight back when the table turns on you.

4. Rules that keep everyone in the game

• Anyone can play Not Today, Captain! on any attack, not just the player being attacked. Save a friend, or let them sink. The table gets political fast.
• Two complete collections of the same kind count as two towards winning. A full set is a full set.
• Skeleton Keys and Treasure Chests go on any completed collection, including Four Winds and Navigator's Legacy, which stand in for the railroads and utilities.
• You can pick an action card back up from your bank on your turn, for one of your three plays, if you banked it too soon.

5. Your table, your rules

When you play with friends, the host sets the house rules: win with 3, 4 or 5 collections, take Safe Harbour or Poseidon's Blessing out of the deck, make everyone pay with gold before treasures, or add Walk the Plank, a card that makes a player throw away their whole hand and draw five new cards.

6. No crew? No problem

Computer pirates fill any empty seat, on Easy, Normal or Hard. If somebody leaves halfway through, a computer pirate takes over their cards, so the game always finishes.

7. A crew with personality

You play as one of 27 pirates, 12 of them free from the start, and each one has a voice of their own. There are 35 lines to shout across the table, 50 levels to climb, a leaderboard that resets every Monday, and hats, pets and pipes to dress your pirate in. The game speaks English, French, Spanish and Chinese.

Where Monopoly Deal still wins

To be fair to it:

• It's a real deck of cards. No phone, no battery, no internet. Pirate Deal needs an internet connection.
• Everyone already knows the streets. The Monopoly names are familiar to almost anyone who sits down to play.
• It fits in a pocket and comes on every camping trip.

We're big fans of it too. If your group plays it at the kitchen table every week, keep doing that. Pirate Deal is for the nights when your friends aren't in the same room.

Side by side