Get Ramified with Gin Rummy

Gin Rummy's played in all classes of society, often for the fun of it, but increasingly often for high stakes by professional gamblers, too. Perhaps because of gin's reputation as a friendly game, more people are willing to play it, people who would shy away from a poker game.

To the real card player, the sort of person who turns up at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, gin is as good a game as poker, if the right people are playing, and the money is right.

The aim of the game is to get all 10 cards in one's hand arranged in melds (three or four of a kind, or three or more of the same suit in numerical order). A player also has an option to "knock" whenever the point count of unmatched cards in his or her hand is less than 10.

One may knock only after drawing, and before discarding. The other player may then lay off unmatched cards from his or her hand that match the knocking player's melds. Honor cards count 10 each, aces 1 each, and all other cards are counted at face value.

Play begins when the two players agree on how many points will constitute total. The dealer gives each player 10 cards from a shuffled deck, and then turns the top card of the remaining cards over to form the discard pile.

Players may draw either from the deck pile or from the discard pile. Each player must discard every time, though it is forbidden to pick up, and then discard, the top card from the pile on the same turn.

The first player to knock, or go gin, discards face-down and then lays their melds down on the table, with their unmatched cards in a separate place, all face-up. The other player does the same, laying-off cards if possible, on their opponent's hands.

When one player goes gin, the other player may not lay off cards on their opponent's hands.

The scoring of gin rummy hands is as follows: For a successful knock, in which the knocker's unmatched total is less than their opponent, the knocker gets the difference between their unmelded points and the other player's, plus 25 points for winning the hand.

If the knock was unsuccessful, the opponent gets the difference between the unmelded points, plus 25 points as 'undercut' bonus.

Play continues this way until one player makes the pre-set game total. That player then receives a bonus of points equal to whatever the game total was, plus the difference between Their winning score, and the other player's losing score.