Rummy Rules

Sets and runs, and going out with your whole hand at once

Rummy is not playable yet Coming Soon

There is no Rummy table in the lobby. The rules below describe a real, working game engine that already exists in this site's code — the deal, a legal meld, laying off, going out, the scoring — but nobody can sit down to a game of it here today.

When there's a table to sit at, this page will say so, the same way the Go Fish and Krazy 8's pages do.

Objective

Build sets and runs out of your hand, and be the first to go out — get rid of everything you're holding. Going out scores you the total value of every card still sitting in everybody else's hand; nobody else scores anything that hand. A match runs to a target score, one hand at a time, with the deal moving one seat left after each.

The Table and the Deal

Two to six players, one 52-card deck.
Ten cards each heads-up, seven each at three or four seats, and six each at five or six.
The rest of the deck is the stock, face down. One card is turned face up beside it to start the discard pile.

Your Turn

A turn is three separate steps, in this order, and the table won't let them happen out of order:

Draw exactly one card — from the top of the stock, or from the top of the discard pile.
Meld and lay off as much as you like. This step is optional; you can do nothing here and still take your turn.
Discard exactly one card, face up, ending your turn.

                A meld is a set or a run. A set is three or four cards of
                one rank, all different suits — three Sevens, one of each of three suits. A
                run is three or more cards of one suit in consecutive rank
                order. The Ace is low by default (A-2-3, not Q-K-A), and a run never
                wraps around the corner — K-A-2 is never legal, whichever way the Ace is being
                read.
            

Laying off puts one card from your hand onto a meld already on the table — including a meld another player laid down. It's only legal if the group it makes, with your card added, is itself a legal meld; there's exactly one definition of a run and one of a set, and laying off is held to the same one a fresh meld is.

Going Out

By default you go out on the discard — you meld and lay off down to one card left, then discard it. You may not meld your very last card away; one has to be kept back to throw.

Going rummy — laying your entire hand down in a single turn, having melded or laid off nothing in any earlier turn of that hand — doubles the points you score by default.

Scoring

Card	Value
Each Ace	1
Each Jack, Queen or King	10
Everything else	Its face value — a seven is 7

Melded cards and cards laid off are already out of a hand and count for nothing either way, for anybody. Only what's still in hand when somebody goes out counts against its owner.

When the Stock Runs Out

The discard pile gets shuffled back into a new stock — everything except its own top card, which stays face up to be drawn. Play carries straight on; a hand is never abandoned for running out of stock.

The top of the discard pile can always be drawn, even if the stock and the rest of the discard pile are both empty, so a hand of this game can never reach a point where no legal move exists at all.

Rules Options

Seven things are decisions, not facts, and the engine states each one out loud:

Option	Default	Meaning
Target score	100	A match ends when a seat reaches it. Playing to `None` instead plays exactly one hand.
Ace rule	Low	A-2-3 only. "High" allows Q-K-A only; "both" allows either reading of the same hand. K-A-2 is never a run under any setting.
Deep discard draw	Off	On, a player may take a card from under the top of the pile, sweeping up everything above it and having to meld the card taken — that's 500 Rummy, not basic Rummy.
Must discard to go out	On	Off lets a meld or a lay-off end the hand outright, with nothing left to discard.
Going rummy doubles the score	On	Laying your whole hand down in one turn, having melded nothing before, doubles what you win.
May discard the card just taken	Off	You can't take a card off the discard pile and throw the same card straight back this turn.
Turn / hand safety limits	200 turns, 100 hands	Safety nets against a hand or a match that never ends, not rules of Rummy as such — a hand that hits its turn limit is a dead hand and nobody scores it.

Rummy isn't in the lobby yet, but the other four games are. Create a free account and go to the Game Lobby to play one of them.