Gin Rummy is a 2 player card game played with a 52 deck of cards, no jokers and hands of 10 cards are dealt to each player with the remaining cards placed face down as the stock pile and one card turned over to start a discard pile.
The object of the game is to dispose of your hand by creating melds of 3 or more of runs or sets which can then be discarded or laid down face up on the table. You create your melds by taking a card either from the stock pile or the discard pile and then disposing of a card. You must dispose of a card to complete your turn. Any cards not included in a meld are referred to as deadwood.
The cards’ are scored by their numbers with the jack, queen and king all scoring 10. When a player’s hand contains a deadwood score of 10 or less he can ‘knock’ to end play. A player is obliged to knock if he has a ‘Gin Hand’ one that contains no deadwood. Play continues until a player knocks or there are only 2 cards are left in the stock pile when the game is called a draw.
You ‘knock’ by discarding a card onto the discard pile face down rather than face up as normal. You then layout and show all your cards separating your melds from your deadwood so your score can be clearly counted. Your opponent may then discard any of their deadwood cards onto your melds if they fit in the run or set (e.g. they may add their ace of hearts to your 2,3 & 4 of hearts) This is known as laying-off and can only be done on the knocking players’ deadwood and not on a ‘Gin Hand’
After a player has knocked and his opponent has laid off any of their deadwood the scores are worked out as the difference between the knocking player’s melds and his opponent’s deadwood. The value of the knocking players meld (e.g. 8) is taken from the value of the opponent’s deadwood (e.g. 11) and the knocking player is awarded the difference as points (e.g. 11-8 =3 points)
If your opponent has deadwood that is equal to or less than your meld score then you have been ‘under-cut’ or under-knocked and the opponent gets a bonus 25 points plus the difference between the two hands (melds to deadwood)
When a player has a Gin Hand then they get a bonus of 25 points plus points to the value of the opponents deadwood, remember they can not lay-off any deadwood on a Gin hand.
There are other bonuses offered in Gin Rummy including a Game Bonus where 100 points are added when a prearranged target is met. A Line (or Box) Bonus; 25 points added to every hand played in the last game of a Gin Rummy match. The ‘Big Gin’ bonus, 6 points when all 11 cards in your hand make up a Gin Hand. (In this case you don’t have to discard the card and it is included and counted in your score).The Shut out Bonus is awarded if a game finishes with the winner having won every hand. Then the points for each hand are doubled before the Line Bonus is added.
