29/04/2008 by Alex.

Gin Rummy Strategy – An Introduction

Gin rummy is a very interesting and fun game to play. However, like some of the other card games, strategy plays an important role in deciding whether you win or lose a game. It is very important to be aware of gin rummy strategy, especially if you are a beginner, as without it your chances of winning consistently reduce drastically. If you are up against an experienced player, without knowing at least some basic gin rummy strategy, your loss would be more or less certain.

Basically, you can divide gin rummy strategy into two types:

• Basic gin rummy strategy
• Advanced gin rummy strategy

In this article, we will discuss some of the strategies you can employ to increase your chances of winning while playing gin rummy.

The Basics of Gin Rummy Strategy

The basic strategies in gin rummy are quite simple. You can easily learn them even as a beginner, and ensure you have the game going. Even as a beginner, you should know some of the advanced strategies as they are simple and enable you to increase your chances of winning greatly. First, we will see the basic gin rummy strategies you can employ.

The first thing you must learn to do while playing gin rummy is to meld cards such that you are able to create runs (sequences of cards) and sets. Once you start doing this, the next thing to do is to start discarding standalone cards, preferably the high ones. The idea is to finish your hand as soon as possible and then knock.

Some Advanced Gin Rummy Strategy

Once you are aware of the basic strategies for gin rummy, you are now ready to learn the advanced strategies. These are also relatively simple, and easy to pick up.

The first advanced strategy in gin rummy is to be aware of the importance of the middle cards. In gin rummy, the middle cards have high strategic importance, even more than the face cards or cards of low value. The card that you can use the most to form combinations is 7.

For instance, the ace may have a high value from the perspective of points, but can be used in a run with just a 2-3 combination. This is not the case with the 7-card, which you can use with different card combinations – at the end of a 5-6 sequence, in the middle of a 6-8 sequence, or at the beginning of an 8-9 sequence.

There is also the possibility of your opponent knocking lower to get an undercut. This is a distinct possibility if the game has meandered such that you are now nearing the end of the card deck. The decision to knock, also called ‘go for gin’, and depends on the number of cards left to draw that could potentially give you gin on your next draw. This number usually ranges from zero to five.

Another good strategy to follow is to retain your high cards at the beginning of a game, as your opponent is more than likely to drop them. You could pick up one of the high cards your opponent drops to create sets or runs, thereby reducing to a large extent the number of points you have left from your unmelded cards. However, you must understand this is a good policy to adopt at the beginning of a game. Holding on to them as the game progresses is a risk that you should not take, as it could mean your opponent is using high cards as well.

Right so there you go that is basic gin rummy strategy and now I have given you some of my wise knowledge, get out there and win some money

Good Luck!

Posted in Offline Rummy, Rummy Games, rummy strategy, online rummy | 3 Comments »

25/03/2008 by Alex.

Since starting this site I can not believe how many versions of rummy there are and also how many different names are used by different people - Even the spellings can vary between friends like Kaluki and Kalookie! Below are just some of the ones I have found so far.

Let me know if you call it something different from the ones I have found below or if you have other versions I can write about.

Carioca Rummy - A South American version
Continental Rummy - There is only one contract used in this version
Contract Rummy - Played with two decks inc. jokers with 3 - 5 people
King Rummy - Four contracts are used in this version of rummy
Progressive Rummy - This sounds cool - The number of cards dealt increases each hand
Liverpool Rummy - This is the same as Contract rummy but the dealer cuts before
May I? - Again like contract rummy but with some major differences such as melded jokers can’t be re-used or that a joker is worth 25 points not 15 points
Shanghai Rummy - This version of rummy has more contracts and wilder scoring
Carousel - Where 1 -3 cards are drawn each turn
Vatikan - Where 0 - 1 card is drawn each turn
Manipulation Rummy - Where you have unlimited drawing
And don’t forget the common types I write about such as traditional rummy, Gin Rummy, Oklahoma Rummy and Kalooki

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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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09/02/2008 by Alex.

When I started playing at the site Rummy Royal, one of the things that anoyed me is that you could only play one table at a time. You couldn’t even be playing rummy on one table and register for a tournament at the same time.
Being an online poker player I like to play around 3 tables at a time whilst also registering for upcoming tournaments, so I found the lack of this function really iritating!!! So when the customer services guy called me up to see how I was getting on, I immediately told him he needs to sort this because it is ridiculous that they didn’t have the function, particulary because rummy is supposed to be the next online poker! Anyway to cut a long story short, Rummy Royal, have now allowed 3 table tournaments so get down there and have a few games!

And since then things have been good to me because I am now on $123.00 all from the free $10 I was bonused at the very start. I should have more but made a couple of mistakes and lost a few gin rummy games in a row which damaged my bankroll - But even better a friend of mine managed to get his $10 up to $1,200 from playing kalooki! Amazing

Posted in Rummy Royal, Rummy Games, my rummy diary, online rummy | No Comments »

11/09/2007 by Alex.

When I wrote the title for this post I wasn’t thinking of the game you can buy in the shops but actually a version of rummi my mum taught us when we were kids. It was much like Gin Rummy but in my opinion a lot more fun!!

In my mummy’s version of rummy instead of putting the cards on top of eachother in the discard pile we would fan them out slightly horizontally, each time we laid one down so you could see all the discarded card. You could then pick up 1, 2, or as many cards as you liked in the “fan” however if you picked up more than one card the last card picked up would have to be immediately used as a meld.

By playing this version of rummy you could go out with a standard 3 and 4 card meld or if you have colleced cards loads of melds. The scorring would then be worked out as follows:

20pts - Going out first
5pt for all non picture and A cards laid out on the table in a meld
10pts for alll picture cards laid out on the table in a meld
15pts for all aces laid out on the table in a meld

In addition to the scoring above anyone with cards left in their hand needs these minused of their total score - these points are scored in the same way as they are added (see above.)

By scoring this way the person that went out first may not win because they have not formed enough melds to gain the points even with the 20pt bonus for going out first.

Give Mummy’s Rummy a go and let me know how you get on or if you have any questions.

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