About Gin Rummy Card Game

Use of the Cards

The card deck doesn’t contain Jokers and the ranking from high to low is King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace. The Ace can only be followed with a 2 and can’t be meld with a King.

Dealing

The dealer shuffles the deck and passes out 10 cards alternately to each player (1 card at a time per player). The remaining cards are placed face down in the center of the group to form the stock. The top card of the stock is flipped face-up and placed next to the stock forming the discard pile.

General Options

You can discard a card you’ve just taken only if you got it from the pile.

It is not possible to discard a card that was face up when you took it (from the discard pile).

If both players pass on the first card, none of them can take it and have to draw from the draw pile.

Terms used in Gin Rummy

• Stock or draw pile – the cards that remain from the initial card distribution.
• Discard pile or pile is a place where each player places a discarded card after each turn.
• Deadwood cards are cards not being part of a meld.
• Knocking – you can knock when you have deadwood cards sum value of 10 or less.
• Meld – when a player makes a meld by either having three or more of a kind or by having three or more of a run. A run is made of three or more cards of the same suit in increasing or decreasing order. Unlike Basic Rummy, players do not lay down their melds in Gin Rummy until someone goes Knock. Intersecting melds is not allowed.
• Gin is when the declaring player has 10 melded cards (has no deadwood cards).
• Big Gin refers to when players have Gin but decided to draw another card and it fits into their meld. They can declare big gin (11 melded cards) without discarding.
• Layoff means to add a card to an existing meld.
• Attacker – player performing a knock.
• Defender – player being knocked.
• Undercut is when the Defender has equal or fewer deadwood points than the knocking player. The situation is known as an Undercut and the defending player receives the points along with a point bonus.

Default Scoring

Points are counted from the deadwood cards:

Ace is 1 point / Number cards worth their face value / Picture cards value is 10 points

Round scoring

After a player knocks, and the layoffs are made, the knocking player receives a score equal to the difference between the two hands. For example, if a player knocks with 8, and the defender has 10 deadwood points in their hand after laying off, the knocking player receives 2 points for the hand.

Gin is 25 points + sum of deadwood in the opponent’s hand. Big Gin is 31 points + sum of the opponent’s deadwood.

In a draw, there are not awarded points to either player.

Game Scoring

The first player who reaches 100 points wins the game.

Custom room options

Points adjustable for online game in the custom room (“Play with friends”):

• Undercut – 10, 20 or 25
• Gin – 20 or 25
• Big Gin – 25, 31 or 50
• Final score – 100/250/500 points