How to Play Gin Rummy
Deal ten cards each from one 52-card deck and turn the next card face up. Take turns drawing one card from the stock or the discard pile and throwing one away, forming sets of equal rank and runs in a suit. When the cards outside your melds total ten or less, knock and lay your hand out. First player past 100 points wins the game.
The rules, step by step
- 1Deal ten cards eachOne 52-card deck, ten cards to each player, one card turned face up to start the discard pile, and the remaining 31 cards left face down as the stock.
- 2Offer the upcard to the non-dealer firstThe non-dealer may take the turned-up card, and discard. If they pass, the dealer may take it. If both refuse, the non-dealer draws from the stock and the upcard is closed to them.
- 3Draw one card, then throw one awayOn every turn take the top of the stock or the top of the discard pile, then discard a card. You may never discard the card you have just taken from the pile.
- 4Build sets and runsThree or four of a rank, or three or more in sequence in one suit. The ace is low. A card can belong to one meld only, never to two at the same time.
- 5Knock at ten deadwood or lessCount the cards outside your melds: ace one, pips face value, court cards ten. At ten or under you may knock as you discard, laying your hand out face up.
- 6Let the defender lay offAfter a knock — but never after gin — the defender melds their own hand and adds any loose cards that fit onto the knocker's melds, reducing their own count before it is compared.
- 7Score the handThe knocker takes the difference in deadwood. Gin takes the defender's whole count plus 25. If the defender is equal or lower it is an undercut, and they take the difference plus 25.
- 8Play to 100, then add the bonusesHands continue until someone passes 100. That player adds 100 for the game, and both players add 20 for each hand they won. A hand left with two cards in the stock is dead and scores nothing.
Try it — the rules above, running
Draw from the stock or take the discard, then tap a card once to select it and again to throw it — two taps, so a mis-tap never costs you a card. Your hand is arranged into the melds that count for least, and the number beside it is your deadwood. Knock lights up as soon as the ten cards left would count ten or less; with none at all it says Gin.
Your statistics
- Played
- 0
- Won
- 0
- Win rate
- 0%
- Streak
- 0
- Best streak
- 0
- Best time
- —
A game counts as a win when you are first past 100 points, which usually takes about ten hands. Best score is your highest final total, game bonus and boxes included. Kept in this browser only.
Keyboard
- ← →
- Move along your hand
- Enter
- Select a card, then discard it
- D
- Draw from the stock
- T
- Take the discard
- P
- Pass on the opening upcard
- K
- Knock with the selected card
- H
- Hint
- N
- New game
- F
- Full screen
How do you set up a game of Gin Rummy?
- 1Shuffle one 52-card deckNo jokers, and no wild cards of any kind. Gin Rummy is a two-handed game and uses a single standard deck exactly as it comes.
- 2Deal ten cards to each playerAlternately, starting with the non-dealer. Ten each is the two-player deal; the three- and four-handed versions of rummy deal fewer and are a different game.
- 3Turn the next card face upThat card starts the discard pile. The 31 cards left form the stock, face down, and are the only source of cards nobody has seen.
- 4Offer the upcard, non-dealer firstThe non-dealer may take it and discard. If they pass, the dealer may take it. If both pass, the non-dealer draws from the stock and the upcard is no longer theirs to take.
What happens on a turn?
Two things, in this order, every time: draw one card, then discard one card. You end every turn holding ten again.
- Draw from the stock and nobody learns anything about your hand. This is the default, and it is what you do when nothing on the pile is worth the signal.
- Take the top discard and everyone sees which card you wanted. Worth it when the card genuinely improves the hand; expensive when it does not.
- Then discard. Any card except the one you have just lifted off the pile — that one is locked until your next turn.
There is no passing and no drawing twice. If you cannot bear to break anything, you still have to throw something, and that is most of the game.
How do you knock, and what can go wrong?
Count the cards that are not in a meld. Ace is one, two through ten are face value, and every court card is ten. If that total is ten or less, you may knock: discard face down, lay your melds out, and announce the count. If the total is zero, that is gin, and it is worth an extra 25 points.
What goes wrong is the lay-off. Once your melds are on the table, the defender melds their own hand and then adds any cards that fit onto yours — the fourth card of your set, or either end of your run, and a card laid on the end of a run opens the way for the next one behind it. Everything they lay off comes straight out of their count before it is compared with yours.
If their count is still higher than yours, you score the difference. If it is equal or lower, they have undercut you: they score the difference plus a 25-point bonus, and the hand you chose to end goes to them. Against gin none of this applies — gin ends the hand outright and no card may be laid off at all.
How is a game of Gin Rummy scored?
| Event | Points |
|---|---|
| Knock | Defender's deadwood minus the knocker's |
| Gin | Defender's full deadwood plus 25 |
| Undercut | The difference plus 25, to the defender |
| Winning the game | 100 to whoever passed 100 first |
| Each hand won | 20 to whoever won it — the box, or line |
Hands keep coming until someone is past 100 on the running score. Then the game bonus and the boxes are added and the totals compared. A match on this board takes about ten hands, so twenty points a box adds up to roughly the size of the game bonus itself — which is why winning several small hands is not the consolation prize it looks like during play.
One hand scores nothing at all: if a discard leaves only two cards in the stock and nobody has knocked, the hand is dead. No points, no box, and the same dealer deals again.
How do you win more often?
- Throw your big unattached cards firstA king costs ten points if you are caught with it and an ace costs one, so the same loose card is ten times more expensive at the top of the deck. With two throws that leave your hand equally well placed, the expensive one goes, and it goes early while the opponent still has too little shape for it to help them.
- Count your fragments against the discard pile, not in the abstractThe nine and ten of spades look like two-thirds of a run until you notice the eight and the jack are both lying face up on the pile. At that point they are nineteen points of deadwood pretending to be a plan. Every card that could complete a pair or a broken run is either in the pile, in your hand, or still live, and only the third case is worth waiting for.
- Watch what your opponent lifts off the pileA card taken from the discard pile is the only certain information you get all hand: it tells you a rank and a suit neighbourhood they are building in. Never feed the same area again unless you have to. The computer scores exactly this: a card matching a rank it watched you take carries the heaviest penalty in its discard choice, a card in the same suit two ranks either side carries a smaller one, and a card matching a rank you have already thrown away is treated as safer than an untouched one.
- Knock small, or do not knockA knock on ten can be undercut by any defender left with ten or less, and the undercut is worth 25 plus the difference. Put numbers on it: knock on ten against a defender who lays off down to fifteen and you take five, but if they reach ten instead they take 25 — a thirty-point swing on the same knock, and more the further under you they land. Knocking on two or three is a different proposition entirely, because the defender has to be nearly gin to catch you.
- Stop waiting when the stock gets shortOnce a discard leaves two cards in the stock the hand is dead and scores nobody anything, so a knockable hand held back for a better one can end up worth zero. With twelve or fewer cards left, take the points that are on the table — that is the rule the computer follows, and it beats holding out for gin.
- Keep the card that can go two waysHold the five and six of hearts beside the six of spades, and the six of hearts is doing two jobs at once. Four different cards finish something for you: the four or the seven of hearts makes a run, and either of the two sixes you do not hold makes a set. A bare pair or a bare two-card run is waiting on two cards at best. So when you are forced to break something, break the shape with one way home and keep the one waiting on four.
Common questions about gin rummy
- Do you have to knock as soon as you can in Gin Rummy?
- No, knocking is always optional. Many players hold a legal knock back to try for gin or for a lighter count, and the only risk in waiting is that the stock runs down to two cards and the hand dies with nobody scoring.
- Can you go out on your first turn in Gin Rummy?
- In principle yes, if the deal and your first draw leave you under eleven points. It is vanishingly rare: about one dealt hand in fourteen hundred is already light enough to knock, and a dealt gin has not appeared once in sixty thousand hands.
- What is the difference between knocking and going gin?
- Knocking means ending the hand with ten or less deadwood, and it can be undercut and laid off against. Gin means ending it with none at all: it cannot be undercut, nothing can be laid off, and it pays a 25-point bonus on top of the defender's whole count.
- How many points do you play to in Gin Rummy?
- A hundred is the usual target and the one this board uses. Some play to 250 for a longer match; the hand scoring is identical either way, and only the number of hands and the weight of the boxes change.
- Can you pick up more than one card from the discard pile?
- No. Only the top card of the pile is ever available, and only one card is drawn per turn. The cards buried underneath it stay buried for the rest of the hand.
Ready to stop reading? Play gin rummy on the full board, with controls and statistics tailored to that game.