Gin Rummy Rules

Gin Rummy vs. Poker

“In his 2006 interview with Inside Edge magazine, a famous gin rummy
player John Hainline, who also loves poker, said that poker can’t
compare with the challenge of Gin. “Gin game depends far less on luck
than poker does”, said Hainline.

John Hainline said that “there are a lot of poker players who are also
Gin players. They go back and forth between two games and they all
agree that Gin is a better game”.
Gin Rummy is a card game where skill (as opposed to chance) has a
larger, predominant factor.

John Hainline was one of the very few players who had more wins than
losses against another gin rummy (and poker!) legend — Stu Ungar.
Stu Ungar’s photographic memory made him one of the greatest gin rummy player in the world. Stu Ungar also won the World Series of Poker three times. Ungar, who is more known for his poker feats, considered himself a better gin rummy player, once saying: “Some day, I suppose it’s possible for someone to be a better No Limit Hold’em player than me. I doubt it, but it could happen. But, I swear to you, I don’t see how anyone could ever play gin better than me.” Stu Ungar was found dead in November, 1998 in a small  Las Vegas motel. Many believed at the time that Stu Ungar was the victim of drug abuse.

Although Gin Rummy is a simple game to start playing, it’s a difficult
game to play consistently well. Knowing just some simple game basics
like getting rid of unmatched high cards and not giving an opponent two cards of the same rank or suit — are hardly sufficient to play the
game on a good competitive level.

In 1995 in Maxim hotel in Las Vegas, 4 gin rummy players including Bill
Ingram, John Hainline, Jeff Mervis and a pool player from Florida split
a $160,000 prize in 85-player Las Vegas International Gin Rummy
Tournament of Champions, leaving each of the four with a $40,000 cash prize. The top four players, then, played for a tournament trophy and Bill Ingram, the real estate broker from Texas and a very good gin
rummy player, won and was declared a tournament winner.

Each year land-based Gin Rummy tournaments with big cash prizes are in Las Vegas Riviera Hotel. 2006, the organizers expected that
300-400 of the world’s finest gin rummy players will compete for the
top title. Registration and more information is available at
www.ginrummytournaments.com

Ken Chase, the 2005 Gin Rummy Champion, also frequently plays Gin Rummy for $ online.

Another very frequent Gin Rummy player is Glenn Abney — a longtime legend who is widely known as Mr. Gin. “I’ve been involved in the biggest, most prestigious gin rummy events for the past four decades,” says Glenn Abney. Abney says that he learned to play gin
rummy from his mother, who, he claims, left a poker game to give birth
to him. At one time, Glenn Abney (a towering man of enormous size and
weight) was regarded as gin rummy’s most fearsome player. Abney says
that he lost some of his competitive edge when he went on a
controversial diet that used an unapproved supplement.  After the diet,
Abney says: “My long-term memory is pretty much shot”.”

Article Source: Google Groups 

Gin Rummy Glossary #1

Glossary of Gin Rummy Terms, Part 1

 

Bonus – If you win a hand, you get a bonus of 25 points. This is your bonus

Count – The sum of the value of your deadwood. Dont forget, that you can add some of your deadwood to your opponents melds, after he knocked.

Cut - After the shuffle, the other palyer can separate the deck into two packets and change their order.

Deal – To  shuffle and give cards to the players.

Discard – After picking a card, you have discard another one to get down to ten cards again. This card goes face up on top of the Discard Pile.

Discard Pile – The pile of cards with the discarded cards. You have to choose between picking a card of the stock or the card on top of the Dicard Pile. 

Face Card – Any King, Queen, or Jack.

Game – The succession of hands ending when one of the players has scored the required number of points, usually 100 in online games.

Gin – If you can meld all 10 cards.

Hand – The 10 cards you are holding.

Knock – To announce that you got to a score of 10 or below, you knoch

Knocking count – The maximum unmelded count with which a player may knock. Same as knocking point or knocking card.

Lay-Off – After a knock, the non-knocker lays his suiting cards to any of the knocker’s sets. There is no laying off when a player has gone gin.

Meld – Three or more cards either of the same rank or in a sequence of the same suit.

No Brainer – A hand that can be knocked extremly fast, which even the worst player will win ;)

Reducer – Any low card picked to reduce the count value in a hand.

Sequence – Three or more cards of the same suit in consecutive order.

Shuffle – To randomize the order of the cards before dealing.

Stock – The unused rest of the deck

Underknock – Having a lower count than the count of the opponent who has knocked.

Gin Rummy Strategy Tip #1

I plan to do a series of Gin Rummy Tips in the future. Lets beginn easy, even if most readers will just laugh about this, there might be some newbies here, too:

 Watch out for those high cards! Because your remaining cards will be added up at the end of the round, throw away any high cards. If you got the Ace and Kind of Spades, waiting for the Queen is just suicidal! Just one card that would help you and 20 deadwood if you lose. Consider any card 8 or higher as a high card. 

Regarding Gin Rummy Rules: The Ace sometimes counts as 1 and sometimes as Ten. So you should clarify that in advance!

Good luck and great cards everybody 

Gin Rummy: A Game of Skill

In mid-1960s a Las Vegas-based Gin Rummy tournament was promoted by mailing flyers to players. The post office objected on the grounds that it was illegal to promote a “game of chance” (a lottery) through postal services. This case ended up in court. After listening to the testimony of experts that included statisticians and several prominent players, the US District Court of Las Vegas on February 23, 1965, ruled that Gin Rummy is indeed a game of skill.

(from “How to Win at Gin Rummy”. Pramod Shankar, Ph.D. First Carol Publishing Edition, 1997. page 76.)

I think this really interesting! Even a court states, that Gin Rummy is a game of skill rather than a game of chance. In fact, in Gin Rummy the skilled player has even a bigger advance than in Poker. Sure there are no-brainer hands, even a beginner will win with, but over the long run, your ability far exceeds your luck (or lack of it).

Stu Ungar

Do you know Stuart Errol Ungar, called Stu Ungar? He was a professional poker player and is still extremly famous. It is because of him, that I like Gin Rummy so much.

 

Stu Ungar (September 8, 1953 – November 22, 1998) is the only three-time winner of the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. But when he was one of the best Poker players ever, he was even better in Gin Rummy. When he was 10 years old in 1963, he won a local gin tournament and after his father died, he left school with 15 to be a professional Gin Rummy player. Soon he won his first tournements, making 10.000s of Dollars. After a gambling prohibit in New York, he moved to Las Vegas to play high stakes gin rummy against everyone who would compete - and he played anyone for any amount. And he nearly always won. When there was really noone left, who´d play Gin against him, he transisted to Poker and got the World Champion in 1980, the first time he ever entered - and defended his title the year after. But he once told an interviewer: “Someday, I suppose it’s possible for someone to be a better No-Limit Hold’em player than me. I doubt it, but it could happen. But, I swear to you, I don’t see how anyone could ever play gin better than me.”

This fascinated me. ;) Since it is said his success is based ony his enormous memory, I really got interested. I train my memory for years now and can memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards in less than a minute. Now I am training Gin to see, how good I can get. And I really love it - Gin Rummy Rules! ;)

(The other side of Stu Ungar is not that glamorous. The millions of dollars he won in Poker and Gin, he lost in other Casino games. He was highly gamling addicted and also addicted to drugs. This problem costed him his life, he died because of drug-abuse in 1998.)

Gin Rummy Association

Did you know that there is a Gin Rummy Association?
They even hold the World Series of Gin Rummy! 

Hopefully you´ll see me there in 2008! The next tournament is the Indiana Ope in Elizabeth from October 11th to 12th 2007. If you compete, you play eight 200 point games and the 25% best player advance to the finals. The buy-in is as high as in proper poker tournaments: 500$. A bit too much for me by now, but it proves, that Gin Rummy is worth to be played and not “antiquated”.

In fact: Gin Rummy Rules! ;)

Just an additional piece of information:
The Gin Rummy Association was founded by John Hainline, certainly one of the best players around the world and winner of several tournaments, and a former gold-pro.

The official Indiana tournament annoncement:

THE GIN RUMMY ASSOCIATION
PRESENTS
THE INDIANA OPEN
TO BE HELD AT THE
CAESARS INDIANA RIVERBOAT CASINO
ACROSS THE OHIO RIVER FROM LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
OCTOBER 11 -P 12 -P 2007
11999 Avenue of the Emperors
Elizabeth, Indiana 47117 
http://www.ginrummytournaments.com/pdfs/GRA_IndianaOpen_2007.pdf

Tipps and strategy-advice to win a gin rummy tournament are given in Gin Rummy: How to Play and Win, for example. 

Gin Rummy Rules

This post is about the standard Gin Rummy Rules. There is a classic book on the topic called Gin Rummy: How to Play and Win by Sam Fry. Nearly all other sources will follow the rules as given in his book.

So what is the objective of the game? Some people will say: “To meld your cards as quickly as possible.” But that is just half the truth. You will understand soon:

To understand the game and its rules, you have to know two terms:
The first one is “melts”. Two types of melds exist:

• Sets of 3 or 4 cards sharing the same rank. For example, 2♥-2♣-2♠.
  
  
• Runs of 3 to 4 cards in sequence, of the same suit. For example, 3♥-4♥-5♥-6♥.

Under the term “deadwood” we understand all of his cardst that are not in any meld. His “deadwood count” is the sum of the point values of the deadwood cards. The point values are:

• 1 for an ace
• 10 for a face card
• its numerical value for the others

Important: Intersecting melds are not allowed; therefore, if a player has a 3-card set and a 3-card run sharing a common card, he can only count one of them and must count two cards as deadwood.

Lets get to the Dealing:
First you have to determine the first dealer. Throw a coin, do a high draw or whatever you like. The dealership alternates from round to round anyway. The dealer deals a ten-card hand each to his opponent and to himself. The 21st card is called the “upcard”. It is placed face-up in a central location known as the discard pile. The remainder of the pack, placed face down next to the discard pile, is called the stock pile.

The non-dealing player has the option of taking the upcard and playing first. If he or she does not, the option to take the upcard passes to the dealer. If the dealer does not want the upcard, play proceeds with the non-dealing player taking a card from the stock pile.

Now we are already into the game! On each turn, a player

• takes either the (face-up) top card of the discard pile or one card from the stock. And he discards one card from his hand onto the discard pile
• he may “knock”, ending the round, under certain conditions

The play continues, in alternating turns, until one player knocks or only 2 cards remain in the stock pile. In that case, the hand would end in a draw. As you can see, while drawing cards, you hopefully build up new melts and discard some of your deadwood. So the total deadwood score decreases. If your deadwood score gets down to 10 or below, you can knock. You have to knock, if the deadwood score gets to 0 - this is called a gin.

Does the player who knocks first win the hand? Not automatically (only if he has a gin)! After knocking, the player has to lay his cards face-up on the table, sorted into his melts and the deadwood. The other (“defending”) player is then entitled to lay off any of his deadwood cards that fit into the knocking player’s melds.

For example, the knocking player has a meld of three Kings. The defending player has the last King as part of his deadwood. He can lay off that King, reducing his deadwood count by ten. If the knocking player has gone gin, however, the defending player is not allowed to lay off.

Scoring

It is worth noting that the amount of points awarded for bonuses may vary from region to region and should be clarified beforehands. No matter what the bonus amounts are, points are scored in Gin for the following:

Knock Points - after a player knocks, and the lay offs are made, the knocking player receives a score equal to the difference between the two hands. For example, if a player knocks with 8, and the defender has 10 deadwood points in their hand after laying off, the knocking player receives 2 points for the hand.

Gin Bonus - after going Gin, a player receives a bonus of 25 points plus the entire count of deadwood in their opponent’s hand. There is no chance to lay off when a player goes Gin.

UnderCut - (sometimes called underknocking) occurs when the defending player has a lower deadwood count than the knocking player. In this case, the defender scores an undercut bonus of 25 points plus the difference between the two hands.

Game Bonus - once a player has acquired 250 points (or some other agreed upon number - but in usual competitions 250 is used!) the match is over, and that player receives a Game Bonus of 250 points.

Line Bonus - (also known as a box bonus) is added at the end of the match. For every hand a player won during the match, 25 points is added to their score.

Big Gin - prior to knocking, if all 11 cards in a player’s hand form a legal gin, the player can retain the extra card as part of their hand, and is awarded an extra 6 points per the “Big Gin” bonus.

Shutout Bonus - if a match is completed with the winner having won every hand, the points for each hand are doubled before adding the Line Bonus.

If you play for money (dare you ;)) , a “bet” for each point is agreed on before starting (for example one pence). So for examle if the loser is 125 points behind the winner after finishing the game, he has to pay him 125 times the bet (if it was a pence a point, this would be 1.25$).

I used the Wikipedia article and the book Gin Rummy: How to Play and Win as a reference for this post.

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Gin Rummy Rules - But what is it?

Hi,

this is my first post on my new blog on Gin Rummy!
For those of you, who don´t this fascinating two play card game, let me just give you a short introduction on the game and the Gin Rummy rules:

Gin Rummy, or just say Gin, is a card game for two people, that was invented in 1909 by Elwood T. Baker from the Knickerbocker Whist Club in New York. In the 1940s Hollywood found the game and it got popular extremely fast.

The Rummy part of the name has got to origins: First it is deductible from Rum, since it was (and is) played for drinks quite often. On the other hand rummy is a slang phrase for something odd or strange.

Gin Rummy is a variant of a lots of card games called Rummy. Actually you can call it a whole family of games. But Gin Rummy is the coolest one of all of them I can promise ;-)

Mr. Baker developed it from an old version called Rummy Poker (“strange poker”) and the Poker variant Whiskey was famous to by that time. So he called his new game Gin, “in order to keep the liquor in the family”.

Gin Rummy is played with a common deck of 52 cards. In practise usually two decks of cards with different patterns on the back are used and each player uses “his” deck of cards, when its his turn to “shuffle up and deal”.

I actually prefer plastic cards, especially the Kem Arrow 100% Plastic Cards. They virtually never fade out and are always like new. This makes it impossible to spot the small bend on the Ace of Hearts or the spot of beer on the Queen of Spades… You know what I mean.