Rummy
Standard, or traditional rummy maintains pole position among a myriad of rummy card games. Considered more skillful than a game of poker, it contains as much, if not more excitement than its high profile cousin.
In This Game Overview
- Traditional Rummy
- Melds
- Laying Off
- Ending
Traditional Rummy
The objective of traditional rummy is to dispose of all of your cards before your opponent(s). The deck is set with one card placed face up as the discard pile.The first player can select the discarded card, or they can draw a new card from the stockpile. A spare card is then discarded to the discard pile. The next player follows suit, but if they want to take the card from the discard pile, the other players will know which cards they are attempting to gather.
Melds
The game continues with players attempting to form groups of similarly numbered cards,or suits of consecutively numbered cards. For example, a player may collect fours, or aces, or they may try for a running sequence of spades or hearts.Each grouping is called a meld. Players can keep their melds in their hands, or lay them on the playing area.
Laying Off
The process of laying off involves adding cards in your hand to those melds that have been placed on the table by other players. By removing cards from a player's hands, this prevents you being caught with a handful of cards,which will count against you, should someone discard all of their cards.
Ending
Game play ends when one player lays all of his cards in the table in melds, or by laying off onto other melds. At this point, anyone holding cards must count up their points, which then count against them in a final total. Point cards carry their face value, picture cards count for ten points, and aces as one point.
