Update: see 2011.

For the purposes of this list, I excluded arcade-like, mmo, social trading, trivia, quiz, and voting games.

Rank Game Publisher Monthly Players Notes
1 Texas Hold’em Poker Zynga 28,873,620 Still the number one for board or card games, but no longer anywhere near the top for popular games in general, having been passed by dozens of sim games, such as Farmville.
2 MindJolt Games MindJolt 13,030,699 A collection of arcade, card, and word games.
3 Family Feud iWin 3,652,686 Like many game show games, this is originally a parlor game.
4 Okey Aylak 2,470,997 I think it’s Aylak, but I’m not sure. Okey is a Turkish tile game that looks a lot like Rummikub.
5 Farkle Viral 2,454,775
6 UNO GameHouse 2,285,294
7 Games 2,052,575 Credit for this package of arcade, card, and word games is not listed.
8 Mahjongg Dimensions Arkadium / MobScience 1,439,060
9 Word Challenge Electronic Arts 1,250,150  A word game.
10 德州撲克 Boyaa 1,157,857 A poker game.
11 Glamble Poker Glamble Gaming Network 1,128,676
12 麻將─神來也麻將 GodGame 899,253 A Mahjong game.
13 Warstorm Challenge Games 899,247 A fantasy combat-themed collectible card game.
14 Scramble Zynga 866,178 A word game.
15 Scrabble (US) Electronic Arts 863,316 Both US and non-US versions of Scrabble now have more players than Lexulous, which has around 361,000. A shame, really.
16 Scrabble (non-US) GameHouse 706,011
17 Super Farkle PlayDom 705,886
18 Blackjack Madness Product Madness 637,857
19 Poker Palace Playdom 617,133
20 Farkle 2 Totally Secret Games 591,736 I don’t have a home page for these guys.
21 Pathwords Zynga 558,470 A word game.
22 Poker Rivals Electronic Arts 557,636
23 6Waves Poker 6 Waves 524,345
24 Okey Oyna Soft Reklam 492,789 Another version of Okey.
25 Mahjong MegaZebra 434,258

7 poker games, 2 game collections, 3 Farkle games, 3 Mahjong games, 2 Okey games, 6 word games, UNO, and a fantasy CCG. Still a whole lot of room for creativity here, guys.

Let’s compare this to last year’s list.

Last year there were almost no sim games, so board and card games were higher up in the rankings; this year you have to wade through hundreds of sim games to find other games (or filter). Last year there were no Asian companies; this year we have 5: 2 from Turkey, and 3 from the Far East. Last year the 25th most popular board or card game had 34,000 monthly users; this year it has 434,000, a more than ten-fold increase.

Gainers: Texas Hold’em has more than doubled its users, while UNO, Zebra Mahjong, and both Scrabbles have risen in popularity. Losers: Lexulous, Word Challenge, Poker Palace, Scramble, and Word Twist have all fallen greatly.