Gin Rummy Rules

Rules of Gin Rummy

Gin Rummy is played with a single, standard, 52 card deck with no Joker Cards.

Aim
The aim of Gin Rummy is to form as many of the cards in your hand as possible into Sets or Runs whilst reducing the value of the remaining cards in your hand to attain the lowest possible points. A set is 3 or more cards of the same value; a run is 3 or more consecutive cards of the same suit.

Scoring
The cards that are left in your hand that are not a part of a set or run are referred to as ‘deadwood’. Cards are valued according to their face value, with Ace always being one and all the picture cards being ten. Remember you want the lowest score possible.

Playing Gin Rummy
• The Cards are dealt: 10 to each player in a two player game, 7 to each in a 3 or 4 player game.
• The remaining cards are laid on the table face down. The top card is turned over and placed next to the pile face up. The pile of cards is the ‘stockpile’ and the face-up card is the beginning of the ‘discard pile’.
• The first player must either pickup the card from the discard pile to add to his hand, or pick up a card from the stockpile to add to his hand.
• The player must throw a card away from his hand, therefore ensuring he will always have the same number of cards.
• Next player repeats the process.
• The first player to show a Gin, Knock or Undercut ends play.
• Other players may add to the cards laid down in order to reduce their penalty points.

Gin
If you have no deadwood in your hand, you place your cards face up on the table: The first to do this has won the game.

Knock
Knocking is laying down your cards in runs or sets like a Gin, except that with a knock you still have deadwood in your hand. In order to this your deadwood must be less than the value of 10. Following a knock, the first, and only the first, opponent may add cards to the sets laid down.

Undercut
An undercut is when a knocker gets knocked. In other words, if someone Knocks but their opponent has less than them, the opponents wins the hand and receives an extra 20 points bonus.

Scoring
According to the method of loosing while playing Gin Rummy is as follows:

Gin: Sum of deadwood + 25 penalty points
Knock: difference in the sum of deadwood between the looser and the knocker.
Undercut: difference between Knockers deadwood and undercutters deadwood plus 10 penalty points.

Gin Rummy rules are easy to learn and playing online can be the fastest and least stressful way of learning the game. Remember, if you try to learn the rules of gin rummy online and make a mistake, nobody else knows who you are, so it really doesn't matter.