Rules of Online Rummy

Online rummy is one of the many variants of the draw and discard category. It’s all about making sets (3 or more cards of the same rank with different suits) and sequences (3 or more cards of the same suit with different ranks). The basic goal in any form of rummy is to build best hands possible consisting of sets i.e. three or four of a kind of the same rank; and three or more cards in sequence, of the same suit.

The main objective of the game is to make sets and sequences, after analyzing the cards, choosing to either draw or discard the cards at hand. The color of the cards doesn’t matter while forming sets and sequences.

Each player is provided with 13 cards and the objective of rummy is to arrange these cards into 4 groups of 3, 3, 3 and 4 cards.

Online rummy needs 2 decks of cards, with 13 cards distributed to each player. And it’s played amongst 2 to 6 players. The player who starts the game is called a dealer, and is chosen randomly at the beginning, and then each player gets their turn to be the dealer of the cards.

Now it’s time to know about the joker cards. There can be two types of joker cards: Printed joker cards (PJC), and the assigned joker cards (AJC). Printed joker cards come with the decks and for the AJC, at the beginning of the game, a randomly selected card is assigned as the joker card. The purpose of the joker cards is that they can substitute any card in the deck while making sets and sequences.

Ranking of the cards is from low to high: Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, Jack, Queen and King, where ace has 1 point, number cards are ranked according to their face value and J, Q, K have 10 points each.

To declare the game, one must have to have at least 2 sequences (at least one of which is a pure sequence) and remaining cards can be arranged to be sets.

The player has to make 2 sequences and 2 sets to play the game. Sequences can be either pure or impure. Pure sequences (ex. 7 club-8 club-9 club-10 club) are those that are formed without using the joker cards and impure (ex. 7club-8 club- PJC/AJC- 10 club) are the ones that don’t uses joker card/s.  

A set can’t have more than 1 card of the same suit. Unlike sequences, there are no pure or impure sets. A joker can be included to complete the hand.

How to finish the game:

For the declaration to be valid there has to be 2 sets and 2 sequences, at least one of which must be a pure.

After all the players get 13 cards each, remaining cards are kept in a closed deck. One card is randomly assigned to be the joker/wild card, and the topmost card is kept in the open deck.

Players can choose to pick either from the open deck or the closed deck. After picking the card, one must also discard another from his lot to the open deck\discard pile, and the next player also can either pick from the open deck or the closed deck.

Scoring:

If a player has not made even a single pure sequence, all his 13 cards are counted as unmatched equaling to 80 points.

If the unmatched cards are J, Q, K or 10= 10 points each card and rest according to their face value.

If player drat the beginning of the game without picking or discarding even a single card = 20 points

If a player drops in between a hand, before other player has done a valid declare= 40 points