Gin Rummy
Draw one, throw one, and try to be the first with a hand that is nearly all melds. The whole game is the count of what will not meld, which is called your deadwood.
The rules
- Ten cards each from a standard 52-card pack. One more is turned face up to start the discard pile, and the rest is the stock.
- The non-dealer may take that first upcard. If they decline the dealer may, and if both decline the non-dealer draws from the stock.
- On your turn, take one card: either the top of the stock or the top of the discard pile. Then throw one card away.
- You may not throw back the card you have just taken from the discard pile.
- A meld is three or more cards: a set of one rank in different suits, or a run of consecutive cards in one suit. A card can be in one meld only.
- The ace is low. A-2-3 is a run and Q-K-A is not.
- Your deadwood is what your unmatched cards are worth: an ace 1, a court card 10, everything else its own number.
Going out
- When your deadwood is 10 or less you may knock: throw your last card face down and lay your hand out.
- If every card melds, your deadwood is nothing and that is gin.
- Against a knock that was not gin, your opponent may extend your melds with their own unmatched cards, which is called laying off. The site does this for them, because declining is never right.
- Nobody may lay off against gin. A card that would have extended one of your melds still counts against its holder.
- Big gin is all eleven cards melding before you discard.
Scoring
- A knock scores the difference between the two deadwood counts.
- Gin scores 25 plus the whole of your opponent's deadwood.
- Big gin scores 31 plus the same.
- If the defender's count is equal to or lower than the knocker's, the knocker has been undercut: the defender scores 25 plus the difference. Equal counts are an undercut, so a knock that merely ties does not score.
- At the end, each player adds 25 for every hand they won, and the winner adds 100 more.
- If the winner won every single hand, the hand points are doubled before those bonuses.
How a game ends
- Deals continue until somebody reaches 100 points, and that player wins the game.
- The bonuses then decide the margin rather than the winner: a player who won many small hands can finish with the higher total and still have lost.
- If the stock is reduced to two cards and the next discard is not a knock, the hand is cancelled: nobody scores and the deal passes.
- A resignation ends the game, and a missed move deadline is a loss, exactly like resigning.
This is the modern scoring set: gin 25, undercut 25, box 25. An older published set, which some rule books still give, scores gin 20 and an undercut 10. The two are separate rulesets rather than two opinions about one rule, and mixing them would give scoring no publication describes.
Gin Rummy terms
- Deadwood
- The cards in your hand that are not in a meld, and what they are worth. The number every decision is made against.
- A meld
- Three or more cards: a set of one rank, or a run in one suit.
- Knocking
- Going out with ten or less deadwood, by discarding face down and laying your hand out.
- Gin
- A hand with no unmatched cards at all. Worth 25 plus everything your opponent is holding.
- Laying off
- Adding your unmatched cards to the knocker's melds to reduce your own count. Never allowed against gin.
- An undercut
- Beating the knocker at their own count. Worth 25 plus the difference, to the defender.
- The stock
- The undealt cards, drawn from face down. Two left and the hand is cancelled.