Rummy — the rules

Rommé — known in English simply as Rummy — is the most-played card game in the German-speaking world, and for good reason: you can learn it in fifteen minutes, yet every round asks you something new. This guide covers everything you need for your first game, then the finer points that win you the next hundred.

The goal

You want to be the first to empty your hand. You get rid of cards by combining them into valid melds — sets and runs — and by adding cards to melds already on the table. Whoever lays down every card and finishes with a final discard goes “out” and wins the round. Everyone else adds up the cards still in their hand as penalty points.

Cards and setup

Rommé is played with two shuffled 52-card decks plus six jokers — 110 cards in all. It suits two to six players. Each player is dealt 13 cards. The rest form the face-down stock; the top card is turned over to start the discard pile.

A turn — three steps

Play passes clockwise, and every turn is the same three steps:

What counts as a valid meld?

There are exactly two kinds of meld, and both need at least three cards:

The set — three or four cards of the same rank in different suits. Each suit may appear only once, so four cards is the maximum.

The run (sequence) — three or more consecutive cards of the same suit.

The ace may sit high or low — but a run does not wrap around the corner: K-A-2 is not allowed in the classic rules.

Laying off

Once your opening meld is down, on later turns you may add single cards to any meld on the table — yours or an opponent’s. A matching 6♣ extends the run 7♣ 8♣ 9♣ downward; a fourth 7 in a new suit completes a set.

The joker

A joker stands in for any card in a set or run.

Two rules are worth knowing:

• If a joker sits in a meld and you hold the card it represents, you may swap your card for the joker on your turn and reuse the joker yourself.
• A joker left in your hand at the end of a round costs 20 penalty points — the most expensive mistake in the game.

Scoring

At the end of a round, every player who did not go out totals the cards in their hand. Use the calculator to score a hand fast:

Card values at a glance:

Going out scores 0. Across several rounds, the winner is whoever collected the fewest penalty points.

Common beginner mistakes

• Waiting for the perfect hand. Every turn you don’t meld, points pile up if someone else goes out first.
• Hoarding the joker. Twenty points is a lot — get it into play before the round ends.
• Forgetting the opening meld. Without the 40 points you cannot lay off, even when a card would fit perfectly.

Where next?

Once the base game feels natural, the variants are worth a look. The most exciting is Robber Rummy (Räuber-Rommé), where you may take cards out of melds already on the table.