The games · Coolhand Cards

Gin Rummy

Draw a card, throw a card, build sets and runs, and knock the moment your unmatched cards add up to ten or less. Or wait, and go gin.

Players: 2
Family: Rummy
App: Coolhand Cards · iOS and Android, soon

How it goes

The next card starts the pile face up. It's offered to you first, then to whoever dealt, and if neither takes it you draw from the stock. Each turn, draw from the face-down stock or the pile, then throw one, never the pile card you just took. A meld is three or four of a rank, or three or more in a row of one suit, ace low. The rest is deadwood: aces count one, face cards ten, the others their number. Knock by throwing a card when your deadwood is ten or under, or go gin with none. The other hand adds what it can to your melds, unless you went gin, and you score the difference. If theirs is the same as yours or less, they undercut you: the difference plus ten. Gin scores twenty plus their deadwood. The table may play both bonuses at twenty-five instead. First to a hundred wins.

A good hand

A hand two or three cards short of gin with several ways to get there: a few pairs and two-card runs that share no card, so any one of a handful of draws finishes a meld, and low cards in whatever is left as deadwood. Watch the pile as closely as your own hand. What the other side throws shows what they don't need, and what they pick up shows what they're building. A card that fits their pick-ups is one to keep, even if it does nothing for you.

The usual mistake

Taking a pile card that doesn't build toward a meld, since it shows the other hand what you're collecting. Throwing the card that finishes their run, when their pick-ups had already told you which suit it was. Waiting for gin when you could knock now: a knock scores the difference between the hands, and gin may never come. And forgetting the stock: when two cards are left and nobody has knocked, the hand is cancelled and nobody scores.

Played differently where you are?

Card games change from table to table, and we researched some of these games instead of playing them. If Gin 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.