Rummy Explained

20/02/2008 by Alex.

As I play rummy online more and more I am finding that there are soooooo many different names for the same game but oddly the rules often also change depending on everything from which country you are in to the family you are playing against. In this post I am going to try and explain the main types of rummy, their common names and the basic characteristics.

The stats on the game of rummy itself are incredible for example did you know mahjong is a version of rummy and amazingly it is played by over 200,000,000 people and another 300 million rummy players to that and you have more than half a billion rummy players in the world which is huge and actually makes it the most popular online card game…..even bigger than poker! Much like poker though it isn’t just one game but is actually a whole bunch of different games that have spun off a core original game.

As mentioned the problem with rummy online is that there are no official rules posted anywhere however the basic fundamental principles of the game are the same, i.e. the style and strategy of each game. John McLeod from the game encyclopedia Pagat, advocates a method of separating Rummy games into a number of categories, including: Basic, Conquian, Knock, Contract, Asian, Meld Scoring, Canasta, and Manipulation.

Category 1 - Basic Rummy Games

Basic rummy games like standard rummy is about melding your whole hand as soon as you can thus making you the winner of the game. However as we have all found basic rummy still varies in its rules depending where you are, i.e. Kalooki (also kalookie, kaluki, kalukie) played in Europe and North America, Rummikub again played in North America which involves tiles as opposed to actual cards (FYI you can select using tiles in Rummy Royal if you like) Loba de Menos which is played in Argentina to name just a few.

Category 2 - Conquian Type Games

Conquian rummy also known as Panguingue stems form the early Spanish communities and although the objective is the same as basic rummy the method of play is very different. Instead of adding a drawn card to your hand  you have to use the last discard to add it to an existing set displayed on the table as soon as you pick the card up. If you don’t do this you must take the next card from the stockpile and put it on top of the discard pile for the next player to use.

Category 3 - Knock Rummy Games

The most common knock rummy game is of course Gin Rummy which like all knock rummy games allows you to only go out when your unmelded cards or deadwood add up to less than a predetermined point score, for example in Gin Rummy it is normally 10. The great thing is that if one of your opponents has less deadwood and therefore undercuts you they will score a bonus against you so you never really know who is the winner until the very end.

Category 4 - Contract Style Rummy

Contract Rummy is a type of rummy where the first meld follows a preset contract which then gets more and more complicated as each deal is made - Remember all Contract Rummy games have two decks. There are loads and loads of names for contract rummy including Shanghai Rummy, Liverpool Rummy, Joker rummy, Progressive Rummy, Carioca Kalooki, Push kalooki, Jamaican Kalooki, South African Kalooki and Telefunken. 

Within these different variations the amount and type of contracts used can vary massively. In Shanghai Rummy there is ten contracts, seven in Contract Rummy, five in Russian Rummy leaving only one in Continental Rummy.

 The most popular form of this version of the game is of course Contract Rummy itself followed Shanghai Rummy, Liverpool Rummy, and Russian Rummy.

Category 5 - Asian Style Rummy

Asian style rummy is played with both tiles and cards which vary a lot more than a normal set of playing cards creating a great number of variations - In addition the sets that you can go out on can vary depending on who or what version you are playing . In some versions you can pick up discards from others to make a set when it isn’t your turn and in other games certain matching sets can be viewed as more valuable than others.

The obvious and most common version of this game is of course Mahjong which as we have come to expect also goes under a bunch of different names including Mahjongg, Mah Jongg, Mah Jong, and Mah Jiang. Mahjong is played with tiles often called money cards across China and Taiwan and 99% of the time will involve some kind of gambling for money. Mahjong is more of a past time in Asia as opposed to simply a game.

Category 6 - Meld Scoring Rummy

Meld Scoring Rummy is very similar to Mahjong in that points are given for melds of which some melds are better than others and thus score higher. A good example of this game is Rummikub and Rummy 500 or 500 Rum, Romanian Tile Rummy, and Indonesian Remi which you probably worked out is Indonesian Rummy.

Category 6 - Manipulation Rummy

Although a different form of the standard game of rummy these games still employ many of the basic rules except that you can rearrange existing melds so that you can create new ones with your cards. Like basic rummy the objective is still to go out first but with this added twist it can get a little tricky. The most common types of this game include Rummikub and Carousel which also goes by Vatikan, Manipulation, and Sabre.

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