The games · Coolhand Cards

Contract Rummy

Seven deals, each with a harder contract of groups and runs to lay down before anything else. Cards left in your hand count against you, and the lowest total wins.

Players: 3 to 5
Family: Rummy
App: Coolhand Cards · iOS and Android, soon

How it goes

Seven deals, two decks, jokers wild, bigger hands in the last four. A group is three of a rank, any suits. A run is four or more in a row of one suit, ace low or high, not both. Each deal has a contract to lay down exactly, all at once: two groups, a group and a run, two runs, three groups, two groups and a run, a group and two runs, and finally three runs using every card, with no throw. Your own runs in the same suit may not join end to end. Each turn, draw from the stock or the pile, lay down your contract, or lay off on a later turn, then throw one. When someone goes out, the others count their hands: face cards ten, aces and jokers fifteen, the rest their number. The lowest total wins.

A good hand

A hand close to its contract with more than one way to finish it: pairs that want a third, and runs with a gap a joker could fill. Once the contract is down, add cards to everyone's melds and throw aces and face cards first, since they count most if someone else goes out. Keep the card a joker stands for in someone's run: with your contract down, you can swap it in and claim the joker, but you must lay that joker off the same turn. A joker in a group stays put.

The usual mistake

Asking "May I?" late in a deal. When the player to draw takes the stock over the pile card, anyone else may ask for that card, nearest in turn first, but a stock card comes with it as a penalty and turn order doesn't change. Then the next card of the pile is offered the same way, to everyone but you. Your hand grows by two just when it should shrink. The other error is sitting on a finished contract, waiting for a tidier hand, until someone goes out and every card you held counts against you.

Played differently where you are?

Card games change from table to table, and we researched some of these games instead of playing them. If Contract Rummy goes differently where you play it, tell us. That's one of the things the closed beta is for.

The closed beta is by invitation. How to ask to join.