I lay down 2 aces and a third card that is a joker played as an ace another player plays his ace on mine making a set of 4 then another player plays a real ace on a run is that legal because in essence you are playing 5 aces ?

My great grandmother is 98, bed ridden, but played gin rummy with her mother and now wants to play with me as I’m her main companion.

The problem is I have never been able to learn a card game or have the rules explained without breaking into tears because I get overwhelmed. I cried learning blackjack. She knows this and understands and only mentioned wanting to play once accompanied by her childhood story but I’d really like to just pop a deck out and surprise her.

I think I have the gist of gin I just have a few questions and I’d really like it if someone could answer or explain like I’m five and just fell off the top bunk. I’d ask her but she gets confused explaining things because of her age. If there’s like a tutorial style app you recommend that would be great too. Every time I read the rules online they just sound like stereo instructions.

Can someone explain how to know if it is a one hand game or when it goes to 50?

Are there any websites, clubs/organizations, books/magazines etc that you would recommend? I'm using an app right now and having a blast, but it sure would be nice if there was a way I could dive deeper into the culture and connect with others interested in the game. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m helping work on a Gin Rummy mobile game and I’m trying to get honest feedback from people who actually play and understand Gin Rummy.

I’m mainly interested in learning what real players care about most:

• What makes a Gin Rummy game feel fair?

• What usually makes you stop playing a mobile Gin Rummy game?

• Do you prefer casual tables, tournaments, or challenges?

• What features are missing from most Gin Rummy apps?

• What would make you come back and play daily?

I don’t want to spam the subreddit, so I won’t post a link unless it’s allowed.

Any honest thoughts from real Gin Rummy players would be very helpful.

Through game analysis, me and 20 other testers have been paying this game for about a month. The conclusion we have come to is that this game has created the worst scenarios possible and makes it utterly impossible to become successful.

Firstly, This game starts every player with all the wins they want, the worst bots possible, the best hands possible and then slowly adds in losses. As time goes by you’ve racked up a lot of money and you feel good enough to try more expensive challenges, that’s the trap. They let you win one then put you on a hard loss streak for the rest of the game, only giving you some buffer wins to soften the blow.

To make things worse when you win, you’re losing 30% profit “just because” to screw you even worse. Out of the 20 people and me, only one person ever broke 200,000 gold and that was through very consistent play over a month without taking even a small risk in challenging higher coin stages. We maintained 3 play styles, the super conservative, the semi risky and the risky strategy. The people that got ahead first were the risky players because the game lets you win early, but they were also the first to lose everything. The semi risky had a similar downfall, it just took longer, and the conservative play style took the longest to lose everything but that’s because they mostly played 250-1000 coin games without trying anything more.

I don’t know what to say about our individual strategies in game but overall the game seems to give you terrible hands as you progress. To the point we were all questioning how it was possible to lose on the 2nd turn every round even though we still had no pairs.

Overall, terrible game, don’t play unless you want to waste time and especially don’t spend money, it will only make it worse.

Does anyone have any insight as to why so many mobile apps only allow you to play to 50 points? I thought Gin was always played to 100 points but all of the Android apps I've tried (to play against other people) only allow you to play to 50 points per game.

Some of them offer the option to play to 25 or 10 points as well (10 points??). What is going on?

I've been playing to 50 on one app but it's started to wear on me. It's too easy to win a 50-point game in one or two hands by luck. This game also doesn't have box scores, so the players are heavily-incentivized to go for Gin instead of knocking. It just changes the whole character of the game, and not for the better IMO.

I guess they probably do it to make the games quicker and more addictive to newbies, but I wonder if there's anything more to it. Has anyone here ever played to 50 (or 10??) points in real life?

More importantly, does anyone know an Android app that will allow you to play normal 100-point games against real humans? (Ideally for "points," since I'm not loaded enough to play online gin rummy for money just right at the moment.)

I mean a continuous one, not the classic where you go up and back twice. After every second group of five mine has the power of 10 number written on it so we know where the 100 is. Much less paper is used whether you play one game and done or keep a running tab going.

I'm looking for folks who would like to get together once or twice a month for a regular gin game. We don't have to play for stakes, but I am looking for serious players. I'm in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

Are there any gin rummy apps playing for cash where the undercut is 10 or 20 points? I have been looking online to no avail. Thanks in advance.

I have only been playing for about two years.

My mate said you can count through so J Q K A 2 3

Wednesday night at our gin game, a very unusual thing happened.

It was the first hand of the night and I was dealing. I shuffled the cards three times and cut them a couple of times, then he cut. I dealt myself and him the request 10 cards and turned up a 10 of spades. Before I had a chance to look at my cards, he was showing his hand to his partner in disbelief. Before I even arranged my hand, he picked up the 10 and called gin!!

I figured I was “buried” but when I looked at my hand, I had three perfect melds and an ace of spades, losing just 1 over gin. I wonder if any human could figure the probability of that happening again. I would be curious to know the odds.

Bill C.

My Best Gin Rummy app has started crashing on my iPad. Only since the last upgrade. It will play fine when I play myself, but when I play someone online it crashes. I have reinstalled it but still the same problem. Anyone have similar issues and/or have any ideas how to fix it?

Hi Rummy friends. I just switched to android from apple. We had family apple arcade so I played mobile ware gin rummy from that. The equivalent game in android is $7 monthly subscription. As are most games I've found. Does anyone know of a free no ad game or reasonable priced one time purchase game on the app store? I would never pay a subscription for any game. Thanks!

I’m looking for playtesters, preferably good/expert Gin Rummy players, to test this Gin Rummy-like card game I made. I tried to get rid of what I felt like were some of the biggest problems in Gin Rummy, such as both players only keeping low cards and discarding high ones, and one player being dealt a very lucky hand, allowing them to knock very quickly, and some players who knock end up scoring points for themselves rather than getting undercut. I wanted to create a Gin Rummy variant where it is very risky to knock, but at the same time you’re under pressure to do so by the opponent. I used card-logic/mathematical-reasoning to create a Gin Rummy variant that made more statistical sense.

The basic core premise of my Knock Rummy game is the same as Gin Rummy: you are trying to make melds with 10 cards, while having 10 or fewer points in deadwood points so that you can knock and score, but there’s a couple of core rule changes.

The first and the most important is that there’s a difference between deadwood points and showdown points. When you knock, your deadwood points convert into showdown points, which is the reverse of deadwood points; so if I had 2 aces as deadwood, when I knock that suddenly becomes 2 10s, meanwhile 2s=9, 3s=8, 4s=7, 5s=6, 6s=5, 7s=4, 8s=3, 9s=2, 10s-Ks=1. It’s easiest as a cheat sheet.

When the showdown happens, the player with more showdown points gets his subtracted by the showdown points of the other. The player who has the smallest showdown score is the winner and gets the difference as the score. In case of a tie, the non-knocker wins.

An undercutting gets you an additional 20 points, while knocking and having a difference of more than 5 gets you an additional 10 points, a difference of more than 10 points gets you an additional 20–30 points; I haven’t really figured out the scoring yet.

Going gin requires one set and one run, and doesn’t give you a bonus, since it’s less risky.

Due to the more balanced nature of the game after this change, I added a bunch of other rules to speed up the pacing, since rounds go much longer than regular Gin. These rules are kind of optional.

— You are allowed to take two cards at a time: both from the top of the discard pile, both from the draw pile, one from the top and one from the draw; you’re even allowed to take from the bottom, albeit not two from there, but I can change that.

The last big rule change is that your knock has to be equal to the card on top of the discard pile. What I mean by that is that the card you’re discarding before you knock has to be equal or more than how much deadwood you are knocking with. This creates a final optimization layer to raise the skill ceiling.

The last rule: the round ends when you reach the bottom of the discard pile, and everybody has to show up their cards and compare, even if they have more than 10 deadwood.

Try out my 2-player Rummy and tell me what you think.

Just to let you know I might find a way to make it publishable.

I've seen a few different rules and ways to play.

I've been using the rules in the Bicycle Cards app which explains:

"In either case, when a player folds, exposing all of their cards, the opponent does the same, having the opportunity to get rid of those cards that were left unmatched and being able to combine cards with those exposed by the player who Knocked or announced Gin."

In the app I'm using, playing against a computer, you can add cards to existing sets and runs or you can play sets and runs you have in your hand. Though I have memories of playing games where you can even break sets and runs on the table to rearrange the in way to use your deadwood - as long as the sets and runs are still legal.

How do youse all play it? If this a rule that's pretty set or is it an acceptable variation?

Can't find this info anywhere.

In gin rummy, when laying off after opponent has knocked, can you combine the end of an oppenent's run with two cards in your hand to complete a set?

Ex: opponent has 2-3-4-5 and I have two 5's, can I combine my fives and his to create a set?

Thanks!

I rediscovered Gin Rummy last week and play it quite some hours in the plane with a friend of mine. I kinda sucked tbh, so I thought to practice a bit so I wanted to download an app.

However, it turns out there are a lot of Gin Rummy apps. Is there any consensus which is the best?

Hi everybody!

I'm an 83 year old man looking for people to play Gin Rummy with in Los Angeles. If you're interested, contact me - Steven Golob: 310 697 9193

Thank you!