How to play Rummy

Shape your hand into sets and runs and get them onto the table: everything you lay down pays you, everything still in your hand at the end is taken back off you. Go out by discarding your last card — and whenever the match ends, the highest total wins it.

The deal gives every player fourteen tiles — and fifteen to the player who plays first, because that extra tile is the draw they would otherwise take. So that player opens the round by throwing, not by drawing. One more tile is then turned face up beside the stock: the atu. The discard row starts empty, and the first player to throw is the one who opens it.

A table plays with two decks — 108 pieces, the whole Romanian remi set — and deals the fourteen above. Two players can agree on the short game instead: one deck and a hand of ten. From three players up, two decks are the only option.

1. Draw one tile from the face-down stock. The discard row is never a free draw: see below.

2. Build, if you can. Lay a new formation of your own, or add a fitting tile to a formation already on the table — but not on your first turn. Nothing of yours reaches the table until your second one, which is why a first turn is always draw and throw.

3. Discard one tile to end your turn.

Breaking the row. Instead of drawing from the stock you may take a tile out of the discard row, on one condition: you have to use it, in that same move, in a formation you put on the table there and then. Take the tile on top of the row and you take that one alone. Reach further in — which only a player who has already opened may do, and only as deep as the row lets you see — and every tile lying on top of the one you took comes with it, into your hand: if the row is 5 10 1 5 3 6 7 and you take the 3, the 6 and the 7 are yours to keep and the row is left as 5 10 1 5. Those extra tiles are ordinary tiles in your hand; only the one you reached for has to be used on the spot. If the formations do not hold up — or you have not opened yet and they fall short of the bar — the whole move is refused and the row is left untouched.

Nobody draws the atu, but somebody can claim it: on the turn you go out, and only then, you may pull it into the meld you are laying — as long as that meld leaves you the single card you are about to throw. There is one atu, so one player a round gets it.

The stock is never refilled. Once it is empty the round ends the moment somebody has to draw: nobody went out, so nobody is paid for closing, and everybody scores the round exactly as it stands.

A set is 3–4 cards of the same rank in different suits. A run is 3 or more cards of one suit in a row; an ace can sit low or high.

Card values: 2 to 9 are worth 5 each, 10 and the picture cards 10 each. An ace is worth 25 in a set, but only 5 as the bottom of a run and 10 as the top of one. A joker is worth 50 in your hand; on the table it is worth exactly the card it is standing in for.

In Rummy 45 and Rummy 51 you have to open before anything else: lay melds worth at least 45 or 51 points in a single turn. Until you have opened you cannot lay off cards on other melds, and you cannot buy a joker off one either.

Every opening also needs a suita — a run of three or more consecutive cards in one suit — and that holds at every table, whatever the points bar is. The suita's own points count towards the bar like any other meld's; there is no separate budget. Classic rummy is the case that surprises people: it asks for no points at all, and it still asks for the run.

Nobody opens on their first turn either. The earliest anything of yours reaches the table is your second one.

Build the melds you are opening with on your own board first, side by side; the button above it adds their points up and only unlocks once the whole opening is worth enough — and if it is still locked, the table tells you which of the two is missing, the points or the run.

Once you have melded, you can add fitting cards to any meld on the table — yours or an opponent's. Drag a card onto a meld, or select it and tap the meld. The points are yours even when the meld is somebody else's: they follow the player who placed the card, not the player who owns the row.

A card may only go where it fits for what it is, which is why a joker can never be laid off. Jokers reach the table inside a new meld and no other way.

A joker stands in for any card in a set or a run, and it is the only wild card at the table — the atu is not one.

Caught in your hand it costs you 50, which makes it the most expensive card in the deck to be holding at the end of a round. Sitting in a meld it is worth exactly the card it stands in for.

You can buy one back. If you hold the card a joker on the table is standing for, drop that card onto the joker and take the joker into your hand — out of any meld, yours or an opponent's. The value of that slot moves with it, off the player who laid the meld and onto you.

A joker that has been bought back is spent: it turns into a plain white tile, and it can never be bought back a second time. It plays and scores exactly as it always did.

Going out with a joker — melding a group that contains one, or throwing one as your last card — is worth double the usual bonus for going out.

Rummy pays you for what you get onto the table and charges you for what you are left holding.

At the end of a round everybody adds up what they put down that round, plus 50 for going out — or 100 if the move that emptied their hand involved a joker — and then subtracts everything still in their hand.

A round that ends because the stock ran out ends with nobody out, so there is no bonus to pay: everybody scores what they got onto the table minus what they were caught holding, and that is the whole of it.

Lay no meld at all and none of that applies: you take a flat −100 for the round instead, whatever else you were holding or dealt. The one exception is the player who went out.

The atu pays twice over. Anybody dealt its twin, the very same tile, scores an extra 50 at the end of the round. And when the atu is a joker or an ace the whole round is a double round: every player's total for it, good or bad, is multiplied by two.

Those points go on your running total, which is why a big number is a good number.

By default it does not: the table keeps dealing, with no target and no round limit, and you play until you have had enough. A room can be set up to stop after a fixed number of rounds instead, or as soon as somebody's total reaches a target number of points.

However it ends, the highest total at that moment wins it.

Open the scores at the top of the table whenever you like, to see the totals and what each round added.

Your tiles stand on a board at the bottom of the screen, one tile to a place. Drag a tile onto any free place to move it, or drop it on top of another tile to slide it in — the tile you dropped on, and the ones behind it, shift along to make room. Tap a tile and then a free place if you would rather not drag.

Formations are made on the board: put three or more tiles side by side with a gap either side, and if they are a real set or run the board prints what they are worth right above them. The button over the board puts every formation it has found on the table at once.

To throw a tile away, tap it and then the discard box on the table — or drag it there. To add a tile to a meld already on the table, tap the tile and then the meld.

To break the discard row, pick the tile you want out of it: before anything moves, the table shows you which tiles would come along with it, and the move only goes through once the formation you are using that tile in is a real one.

The atu sits beside the stock: drag it into a formation on your board to claim it, and the table only lets it go when that meld would leave you one tile. To buy a joker back, drop the tile it is standing for straight onto it, wherever on the table it is sitting.

A practice match runs entirely on your device against bots, with no connection needed. A bot only ever sees what any opponent at the table could see: your hand and the order of the stock are hidden from it, so it cannot cheat.

Online, a bot can also step in for a player who has gone quiet, so the table keeps moving instead of waiting out every clock.

Leaving a match with the back arrow does not give the round away: the table marks you as away and plays your turns for you, and your seat — with its score and its place in the match — is held until you come back and take it again.