The Penguin Book of Card Games: Everything You Need to Know to Play Over 250 Games (162 page)

Preliminaries Deal nine cards each from a double pack including

four Jokers. Stack the rest face down and turn the next to start a

discard pile.

Object To meld cards as you go along and be the first to go out.

There are two types of meld.

1. Pierna (‘leg’). From three to six cards of the same rank and

exactly three dif erent suits. Thus a pierna of 5 5 5 5 is

valid, but not 5 5 5 (two suits) or 5 5 5 5 (four suits).

2. Escalera (‘ladder’). Four or more cards in suit and sequence,

counting Ace high or low but not both. Thus JQKA and

A234 are valid, but not QKA2.

Jokers are wild, but they cannot be used in piernas, and no escalera

may contain more than two. A Joker cannot be exchanged for the

natural card it represents, but it can be counted as either end of a

legal sequence. For example, you can meld 345

, and

subsequently add to it either 6 or A, leaving ik to represent

either 2 or 6. But in A23

or 23

5, for example, it can

only represent 4.

Play At each turn you (1) draw one card, (2) shed cards by making

new melds or laying of one or more to your own or other players’

melds, and (3) make one discard if you have any left. But:

you may not draw the upcard unless you can immediately use

it to make a new meld in conjunction with other cards from

your hand; and

you may not discard a Joker, unless it is the only card in your

hand, in which case you may discard it to go out.

End of deal Play ceases when one player goes out. The others

End of deal Play ceases when one player goes out. The others

record penalty points equivalent to their deadwood, counting Aces

and courts at 10 each and numerals at face value. If you go out by

get ing rid of al nine (or ten) cards simultaneously, having not

previously made any melds or lay-of s, you reduce your penalty

score by 10 points.

End of game A player whose penalty score reaches 100 must drop

out, but, upon payment of a single stake, may immediately come

back in again (reengancharse) with the score of the player with the

highest current total. No player, however, is al owed more than two

reenganches. The final winner is the last player left in, or the player

with the lowest score if a point is reached at which everybody’s

score is 100 or more.

Gin

2-3 players, 52c

I will not attempt to describe Gin-Rummy in detail as you can call up any insane asylum and get any patient on the ’phone and learn all about it in no time, as all lunatics are bound to be Gin players, and in fact the chances are it is Gin-Rummy that makes them lunatics.

Damon Runyon, The Lacework Kid

Gin Rummy is said to have been perfected in 1909 by a

Philadelphian Whist tutor cal ed Elwood T. Baker. A logical

development of Conquian/Coon Can, Gin achieved maximum

popularity in the 1930s and 1940s as ‘the game of the stars’ of both

Broadway and Hol ywood – as wil be wel known to al who stil

enthuse over films of that period. It is subject to many minor

variations, and further confused by the fact that many people cal

almost any form of Rummy ‘Gin’ even when it isn’t. Real Gin is

normal y played by two and usual y for money, though it is

undeniably a game of skil . The classic version runs as fol ows.