Rummoli rules, explained simply

Rummoli is not Rummy. It borrows the name and the idea of laying cards in sequence, but it is a different game: a Canadian family classic, first sold by the Copp Clark company of Toronto in 1940, that combines a hand of poker with a race to get rid of your cards. Chips sit on a board, and certain cards win them. If you came here for Rummy, our Rummy rules are the page you want.

Each hand of Rummoli has four parts: everyone antes, the cards are dealt, a round of poker is played for one pot – and then comes the part the game is named after, the run of cards, where pay cards collect their chips and the first player out takes the big pot in the middle. Below you can tap every space of the board, watch a whole hand play out card by card, and print the rules on one page.

What you need

• 2 to 8 players. It is at its best with four to seven.
• One standard 52-card deck, no jokers. Aces are high.
• Chips – poker chips, buttons or coins. Families often play for pennies or dimes; 30 to 50 chips each is plenty for an evening.
• A Rummoli board. It is an octagon with nine spaces: eight around the edge and the Rummoli pot in the middle. Printed boards are sold with the game, but a sheet of paper with nine circles works just as well.

Tap a space to see how it is won:

Which corner each space sits in does not matter; the cards they stand for do. Five of them are single cards (10♠, J♦, Q♣, K♥, A♠), two are combinations (K-A of diamonds and 7-8-9 of one suit), one is for the best poker hand, and the centre goes to whoever gets rid of their cards first.

A hand in four steps

Ante and deal

Before every deal, each player puts one chip on each of the nine spaces. The dealer then deals out the whole deck, one card at a time, to every player and to one extra hand, the widow. Some players end up with one card more than others; that is part of the game.

The widow is a dead hand. The dealer may swap their own hand for it without looking at it first, or keep their hand and auction the widow to the highest bidder, who pays the dealer and swaps hands. Either way, whoever takes the widow must keep it, even if it turns out worse. Many families add a rule that nobody holding a pay card may take the widow – neither the dealer by swapping nor a bidder. Agree on that before you start.

How many cards does everyone get? The deck is shared among the players plus the widow:

The poker round

Everyone picks five cards for their best poker hand and sets the rest aside, face down. The usual poker ranking applies, from the best: straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, high card.

There are two ways to play it, and the table chooses before the game:

1. Showdown. Everyone shows their five cards, and the best hand takes the poker pot.
2. With betting. Players bet, raise and fold as in ordinary poker, and all the bets go into the poker pot. The last player left in – or the best hand at the showdown – takes it. If you folded, you cannot win it, even if your hand was better.

Then everyone picks their cards back up. The poker winner starts the next part.

The run: how the Rummoli sequence works

This is the heart of the game, and the part most people ask about. It works like a chain of cards climbing up each suit.

1. The poker winner lays the lowest card in their hand, face up, and calls it out. Aces are high, so the lowest card is usually a 2, 3 or 4. If two cards are equally low, they choose which to lay.

2. Whoever holds the next card of the same suit lays it. After a 4♥ comes the 5♥, from whoever has it. If you hold several cards in a row, you lay them all.

3. The run stops when an ace is laid, or when nobody can lay the next card – because it is in the widow, or because it has already been played earlier in the hand.

4. At a stop, the colour changes. The player who laid the last card now lays their lowest card of the opposite colour: a red card (♥ ♦) after a black run, a black card (♠ ♣) after a red one. A new run starts from there. If that player has no card of the other colour, the lead passes to the left until someone has one.

5. Pay cards collect their space as soon as they are laid. Lay the 10♠, J♦, Q♣, K♥ or A♠ during the run and the chips on that space are yours. The two combinations are trickier. The original rules only say that whoever plays the sequence collects; many families read that as one player laying the whole combination in a row – the 7, 8 and 9 of one suit, or the king and then the ace of diamonds – and that is how the demo below plays it. Some tables pay the space to whoever lays its last card instead. Played the strict way, these two spaces often sit for several hands and grow.

6. The first player to lay their last card wins the hand. They take the Rummoli pot in the centre, and every other player pays them one chip for each card still in their hand.

Sometimes the run gets stuck: after a stop, nobody at the table holds a card of the other colour. That is a deadlock. The hand ends, and everyone puts one chip per card in their hand into the Rummoli pot, which then waits for the next hand.

Watch a whole hand play out

Here is a real hand for four players, dealt and played strictly by the rules above. Every hand is open, and the widow lies face up but out of play, so you can see why each run stops. Step through it with ◀ ▶ (or the arrow keys), jump to the end, then deal the next hand: the unclaimed spaces stay on the board, just as at a real table.

In this demo the dealer keeps their hand, the poker is a simple showdown and the two combinations pay only to one player laying them in a row, so you can follow the run. At a real table you choose those rules yourself.

The nine spaces at a glance

Unclaimed spaces stay on the board. A pay card that sits in the widow, or never gets laid because the hand ended first, wins nothing – the chips wait, and the next ante makes the pile bigger.

Ending the game

Rummoli has no fixed finish. Stop at a time you agree on, or when all but one player have run out of chips. Whatever is still on the board is shared out at the end – most often with one last poker hand for all of it (everyone gets five cards, best hand wins), or by cutting the deck, high card takes all. Some families instead play one more hand for each space that still holds chips. The player with the most chips wins.

Printable Rummoli cheat sheet

Everything above on one A4 page: the board, the four steps, the run in four rules, the pay cards and the end of a hand. Download the PDF and print it at actual size; on US Letter, choose “fit to page”.

Rummoli and its relatives

Rummoli belongs to an old family of “stops” games, in which cards are played in sequence until a missing card stops the run. Its closest relative is the American Tripoley (also sold as Michigan Rummy), which appeared in Chicago in 1932 and uses a board in the same way. Both go back to Poch, a game played in Europe since the 15th century or earlier – Poch boards are still sold in Germany. Michigan, also called Boodle or Newmarket, is the same run of cards without the poker. None of them has anything to do with the Rummy family, where you build sets and runs and draw from a pile.

Questions players ask

Is Rummoli the same as Rummy?

No. Rummy is about drawing cards and laying down sets and runs. In Rummoli nobody draws: you play out the hand you were dealt, after a round of poker, and race to empty it.

What is the widow in Rummoli?

The extra hand dealt as if for one more player. Its cards are out of play unless the dealer swaps for it or auctions it. A card in the widow can never be laid – which is what stops many runs.

What happens if nobody can play?

If nobody holds the next card, that is an ordinary stop and the last player switches colour. Only if nobody at all holds a card of the other colour is the hand stuck: everyone pays one chip per card in hand into the Rummoli pot.

Can you play Rummoli without a board?

Yes. Draw a circle in the middle of a sheet of paper and eight around it, and label them as in the board above. Our cheat sheet has a small board printed on it.