rummy, any of a family of card games whose many variants make it one of the best-known and most widely played card games. Rummy games are based on a simple mechanism and a simple object of play. The mechanism is to draw cards from a stockpile and discard unwanted cards from the hand to a wastepile, from which cards can also be subsequently drawn, and the object is to form sets of three or four cards of the same rank or sequences of three or more cards of the same suit. Such combinations are called melds. Any cards left unmelded in a player’s hand at end of play are called deadwood and count as penalties.

Rummy family

Although rummy’s basic pattern is prefigured in certain Oriental tile and card games, such as the Chinese mah-jongg and the Japanese hanafuda games, the oldest Western example of a rummy game is the 19th-century Mexican game of conquian, and Latin America has always produced the keenest players and most-inventive developers of rummy games.

The name rummy, originally rhum, first appeared in the 1900s and has become generic for the whole group. Rummy games enjoyed an explosion of popularity and development in the first half of the 20th century, culminating in the highly elaborate partnership game of canasta in the 1950s. Such rapid evolution has resulted in a confusing variety of informal games under an equally confusing variety of interchangeable rules and names. Kalookie (variously spelled) denotes any form of basic rummy played with 104 cards (a doubled pack) plus jokers.

The rummy family can be broadly divided into positive and negative types. In negative games—the earlier branch—players only score negative points for deadwood; melds count for nothing, so the general aim is to go out as soon as possible. In positive games melds carry plus scores, so the primary aim is to meld as much as possible and to delay going out until one can do so most profitably.

Rummy games may be classified as follows:

  • Flat-out games (the oldest type), such as conquian. No melds are revealed until someone goes out by melding a whole hand in one go. In this respect these games resemble “going-out” games such as crazy eights.
  • Knock-out games, such as gin rummy. No melds are revealed until someone ends the game by knocking (i.e., rapping on the table or verbally indicating the intention to end the hand), believing he has the lowest amount of deadwood.
  • Drift-out games, such as rummy and kalookie. Melds are revealed as play progresses, and the game ends when someone runs out of cards.
  • Contract games, such as contract rummy. The first meld made by each player in each deal must conform to a statutory pattern (the “contract”), and the contract requirement gets tougher as further deals ensue.
  • Rearrangement games, such as vatikan (and the propriety tile game Rummikub). Melds are revealed as play progresses and are common property, enabling anyone to extend and rearrange constituent cards to form different melds.
  • Canasta and its relatives, the positive-scoring games as opposed to those listed above, which are all basically negative.

Basic rules

Basic rummy goes back to the early 1900s, when it was described under such names as cooncan, khun khan, and colonel. The following rules are typical but are subject to local variations because players tend to incorporate into their game features they have encountered in other games of the same type.

Depending on the number of players, one or two 52-card decks are used; two or more jokers per deck may be added. Cards are dealt according to the number of players as follows: two players are dealt 10 cards each from a single deck (52 cards plus optional jokers), three players are dealt 7 or 10 cards each from a single deck, four or five players are dealt 7 cards each from a single deck, and four to seven players are dealt 10 cards each from a double deck (104 cards plus optional jokers). The undealt cards are stacked facedown to form the stock, and the next card is turned up to start the wastepile, or discard pile.

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The aim is to go out first by melding all one’s cards, with or without a final discard. Valid melds are sets and suit sequences of three or more cards. The lowest sequence is A-2-3, and the highest ends J-Q-K. (Many now count ace high or low but not both, which thus allows A-2-3 and Q-K-A but not K-A-2.)

Each player in turn draws the top card of either the stock or the wastepile and takes it into hand. The player may then meld any number of sets or sequences of cards from in hand or lay off individual cards to melds already on the table, regardless of who made them. Finally, the player discards (plays a card faceup to the wastepile). If the player took the upcard, the discard must differ from it.

Jokers are wild. For example, a sequence may consist of 3-4-joker-6 (in one suit) and a set of 3-3-joker. A player who steals a wild card from any meld on the table must replace it with the natural card it represents.

If the stock runs out before anyone has gone out, the wastepile is turned over to form a new stock, and its top card is turned faceup to start a new wastepile.

Play ceases the moment someone goes out by playing the last card from his hand, whether as part of a new meld, laid off to the table, or as a discard. That player wins and scores (or is paid by the other players) according to the value of cards left unmelded in the other players’ hands—jokers at 15 points, court cards at 10, aces at 1 (11 if the Q-K-A sequence is allowed), and other cards at their index value.

David Parlett
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rummy

gin rummy, card game of the rummy family that became an American fad in the 1940s.

Two play, using a 52-card deck; each player is dealt 10 cards facedown, one at a time, beginning with the nondealer. The remainder of the deck, placed facedown, forms the stock, the top card of which is turned up beside it to start the discard pile. The nondealer may take the top card from the discard pile or refuse it; if the nondealer refuses, the dealer has the same option. If both refuse, the nondealer draws the top card of the stock. Thereafter, each player in turn takes the top card of either the discard pile or the stock and then discards one card faceup on the discard pile.

The object of play is to form melds as in rummy—either sequences of three or more cards of the same suit or sets of three or more cards of the same rank. After drawing, a player whose unmatched cards (less one discard) total 10 points or less may “knock” (by physically rapping the playing surface or by making a verbal declaration). Face cards count 10 points each, aces 1 point each, and other cards their index value. Upon knocking, a player melds up to 10 cards, with unmatched cards to one side, and then discards the 11th card. Melding all 10 cards is called going “gin.”

The opponent of the knocker may lay off unmatched cards upon the knocker’s sets, thereby reducing the opponent’s count. If the knocker has the lower count of unmatched cards, he wins the difference. Should the opponent have an equal or lesser count, he has undercut the knocker and receives the difference (if any) plus a bonus of 25 points. The knocker cannot be undercut if he has gone gin; he receives, in addition to the total points of his opponent’s unmatched cards, a bonus of 25 points.

The first to reach 100 points wins the game and receives a 100-point bonus. Each player then adds to his score 25 points for each hand he has won, called a box. If the loser has failed to score, the game is a shutout, or a schneider, and the winner’s total score is doubled. Gin rummy is frequently played with several variations and as a gambling game, often for a small amount of money per point.

David Parlett