Rummy – Play Online for Free

Rummy is a game of collecting cards and getting rid of them again. In turn, everyone draws a card, lays down matching cards face up as sets of the same rank or runs in one suit, and finally discards a card. Whoever empties their hand first ends the round, and everyone else counts the value of the cards they still hold as penalty points. The version here follows the rules that are popular in Germany and Austria, where the game is called Rommé and is played with two decks and jokers. You take on three computer opponents.

The German name Rommé looks French, yet it is simply the German spelling of the American word rummy; in France itself the game is called Rami. Strictly speaking, rummy stands for a whole family of games. Its ancestor is thought to be Conquian from Mexico, played with the 40-card Spanish deck. It appears as early as 1852 on a list of permitted pastimes in New Mexico, and the oldest known description was printed in New York in 1887. The game historian David Parlett even suspects roots in China, among card games related to Mah Jong in which drawing, discarding and melding are recorded by the early 19th century at the latest. In 1910 the New York Sun reported on a fashionable new game called Rum, which some spelled Rhummy. Whether the old slang word rum for odd, a poker variant called Rum Poker or simply the liquor lies behind the name is still an open question.

The family has produced many well-known offshoots, Gin Rummy and Canasta among them, and in America Gin Rummy eventually pushed the older fishing game Casino aside. Rummikub carried the principle over to numbered tiles and was named Germany's Game of the Year in 1980.

Sets, Runs and the 40-Point Hurdle: The Rules of Rummy

The game uses 106 cards: two decks of 52 plus two jokers. Everyone at the table gets thirteen. One card is then turned face up to start the discard pile, and the rest lie face down as the stock. Many German tables shuffle in six jokers, but here there are just two, which makes every single one all the more valuable.

• Drawing: Every turn begins with one card, taken either from the face-down stock or from the top of the discard pile. You do not have to use the card you picked up right away.
• Sets: Three or four cards of one rank in different suits, for example three Nines in clubs, hearts and diamonds. Two Nines of Clubs may not appear in the same set, even though the two decks contain that card twice.
• Runs: At least three consecutive cards of one suit. The Ace may sit low before the Two or high after the King, but never both at once: King, Ace, Two is not a run.
• First meld: The first combinations you put down in a round must be worth at least 40 points together, though you may spread them over several sets and runs. Tens and face cards count 10 each, the Ace 11, or just 1 at the bottom of a run, and every other card its face value. You select all the cards first, and the Lay Down button keeps count as you go and only becomes available from 40 points on.
• Laying off: Only after your first meld may you add single cards to the combinations on the table, your own as well as your opponents'. To do so, select the card and tap one of the melds that glow green.
• Jokers: A joker stands in for exactly one missing card, and each meld may hold no more than one. In your first meld it is worth as much as the card it replaces. If you hold exactly that card, you can trade it for the joker with a tap on the meld. You must then play the joker again in the same turn, or it goes back to its old place.
• Discarding: With Done you finish melding and put one card from your hand on the discard pile. If that is your last card, you win the round.
• Rummy: If you meld or lay off your last cards so that none is left over to discard, you have made a rummy. The penalty points of every opponent then count double for that round.

At the end of a round, everyone pays for the cards still in hand, with a joker costing 20 points and an Ace 11. Once someone reaches 200 penalty points, the match is over, and whoever has collected the fewest wins. If two players share the lowest score, more rounds follow. The stock is rebuilt from the discard pile once. Should it run dry a second time, the round ends without a winner and everyone pays for their hand. A gold dot next to a name shows who has already made a first meld. On Easy the opponents play carelessly, while on Hard they search every hand for the split that gets the most cards onto the table.

Tips for collecting fewer penalty points:

• Discard expensive loners: Whatever you hold when the round ends is your score. An Ace or King without a partner costs 11 or 10 points the moment someone else goes out, so part with cards like that early.
• Take the face-up card only with a plan: Reach for the discard pile when the card is certain to complete a combination. A card that might come in handy someday only makes your hand heavier, and everyone at the table sees what you took.
• Open with high cards: Jack, Queen and King alone add up to 30 points, whereas Ace, Two, Three and Four bring just 10. Plan your first meld around face cards and high numbers.
• Keep cards with two chances: An Eight of Spades next to the Nine of Spades and an Eight of Diamonds can end up in either a run or a set. Cards like that are the last ones you give away.
• Win the joker back: If a joker sits in someone else's meld and you hold the card it stands for, the swap is worth it, as long as you can place the joker again in the same turn.
• Look out for a rummy: When only a few cards are left in your hand, check whether they all fit together. If you then put them all down instead of discarding the last one, everybody else's penalty points double.

Collect, Sort, Clear: Five Games for Combination Lovers

Collecting what belongs together, building sequences, dodging penalty points: every game below picks up one of those ideas.

• President: Here, too, you get rid of cards in groups of the same rank, as pairs, three of a kind or even four at once as a bomb. Whoever finishes last becomes Scum and has to give up their best cards.
• Spider Solitaire: Two decks with 104 cards in all lie on the table there as well. The goal is runs of one suit from the King down to the Ace, and every complete run leaves the board.
• Hearts: The scoring will feel familiar: every point is a penalty point, the match ends at 100, and whoever has collected the fewest is in the lead. The fight, however, is over tricks rather than combinations.
• Mau-Mau: A face-down stock, an open discard pile and the goal of emptying your hand will all seem familiar. Only there you shed one card at a time, each matching in suit or rank.
• Mahjong: The tiles come from a Chinese game that also works with sequences and identical tiles. In this solitaire version you clear them away in pairs until the board is empty.