How to play rummy

Indian rummy is a matching game. You are dealt thirteen cards, and your job is to rearrange them into tidy groups before anybody else does. Every turn you take one card and throw one away, so the hand you hold is never bigger than thirteen — it just gets better, or it does not. The game is quick to learn and takes a long time to play well, which is most of its appeal.

What you are playing with

A standard 13-card game uses two decks of 52 cards plus two printed jokers — 106 cards in total. Two decks matter more than it sounds: it means there are two of every card, so the seven of hearts you need might still be out there after one has already been discarded.

Cards rank A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K. The ace is unusual: it works at both ends. A-2-3 is a run and Q-K-A is a run, but K-A-2 is not — the sequence cannot turn the corner.

The deal

Each player is dealt thirteen cards face down. The cards that are left become the closed pile, placed face down in the middle. One card is turned over beside it to start the open pile. Finally one more card is cut at random and set aside face up: that card names the wild joker for this deal.

The wild joker is the single most important thing on the table when the deal starts. If the cut card is the six of clubs, then every six in the game — clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds, all four of them, twice over because there are two decks — behaves as a joker for this hand. Together with the two printed jokers, that is ten wild cards in play.

Your turn

A turn has exactly two parts, always in this order:

1. Draw one card. Either the unknown top card of the closed pile, or the visible top card of the open pile.
2. Discard one card face up onto the open pile.

That is the whole loop. Take one, throw one, pass the turn. Which pile you draw from is the first real decision in rummy: the closed pile is a gamble that tells your opponents nothing, while the open pile gives you a card you have already seen and tells everyone exactly what you are building.

The groups you are trying to make

Sequences

A sequence, also called a run, is three or more consecutive cards of the same suit. Four of hearts, five of hearts, six of hearts is a sequence. Four of hearts, five of spades, six of hearts is not.

A sequence that uses no joker at all is a pure sequence, and you must have one. It is the single rule that shapes the whole game. A sequence that leans on a joker to fill a gap — say five of hearts, joker, seven of hearts — is an impure sequence, and it is perfectly valid as your second group.

Sets

A set is three or four cards of the same rank in different suits: three queens, one each of hearts, spades and clubs. Because two decks are in play you must watch for duplicates — queen of hearts, queen of hearts, queen of spades is not a set, because two of those cards are the same card. A joker can stand in for a missing suit.

What a winning hand looks like

To declare, all thirteen of your cards must be arranged into valid groups, and those groups must satisfy two conditions:

• At least two sequences, and
• at least one of those sequences must be pure.

Everything beyond that can be sets or more sequences, in any mix. A typical winning hand is a pure sequence of three, an impure sequence of three, and two sets of three and four — or a pure run of four, a second run, and one set of six spread across the rest. There is no requirement to have any sets at all: four sequences is a fine hand.

A hand with three sequences and one set but no pure sequence is worth nothing. A hand with one beautiful pure run of six and nine loose cards is also worth nothing. Rummy is all or almost nothing, which is why the middle of the hand is where the game is decided.

Declaring

When your thirteen cards are grouped, you take one more card as usual so you are holding fourteen, place that fourteenth card face down in the finish slot, arrange your groups, and show. If everything is valid you win the deal and score zero. If you have made a mistake — a set with a duplicate suit, a run in mixed suits, no pure sequence — the declaration is invalid, and in most formats you are penalised the full 80 points while the hand carries on without you.

This is worth saying plainly, because it is the most common way new players lose a hand they had already won: check the pure sequence twice before you show.

Scoring, briefly

The winner scores zero. Everyone else counts the cards they could not group. Face cards and aces are 10 points each, numbered cards are worth their face value, and jokers count as zero. If you have no pure sequence, every card in your hand counts against you, up to a maximum of 80.

If you do have a pure sequence, any complete groups are excused and you only count the loose cards. That is the practical reason to build the pure sequence first: it puts a ceiling on how badly the hand can end.

Dropping

You are allowed to leave a hand instead of playing it out. Dropping before your first turn costs 20 points; dropping later, once you have picked up a card, costs 40. Both are cheaper than losing with an ungrouped hand. Recognising a bad deal early is a real skill, not a failure of nerve.

A first hand, in order

1. Sort by suit as soon as you are dealt, and put your jokers to one side so you never miscount them.
2. Find the closest thing you have to a pure sequence — two cards of the same suit in a row, or with one gap.
3. Decide which cards are never going to be part of anything, and start throwing those.
4. Draw from the closed pile unless the open card genuinely completes a group.
5. Get the pure sequence finished before you spend jokers on anything else.
6. Build the second sequence, then fill the rest into sets.
7. Count to thirteen, check the pure sequence again, and declare.

When that sequence of decisions starts feeling automatic, read the full rules reference for the edge cases, then the tips page for the habits that separate a careless hand from a clean one. Kash Rummy is free and has no real money in it, so the cost of practising is your time and nothing else.