How to Play Gin Rummy: Rules, Knocking and Scoring Explained

Gin rummy is a two-player card game played with a standard 52-card deck. Each player gets 10 cards, and on every turn you draw one card and discard one, trying to arrange your hand into melds (sets of the same rank and runs in the same suit). Once your leftover cards, the deadwood, add up to 10 or less, you can knock to end the hand, and with no deadwood at all you go gin for a bonus. The first player to reach 100 points wins the game.

Below are the full rules exactly as Poozee's Gin Rummy plays them, with every worked example scored by the game's own rules engine. Where common rule books differ, we say so. For when to knock and which cards to keep, see our Gin Rummy strategy guide.

Gin rummy at a glance

On Poozee you play against the computer. The dealer of the first hand is picked at random, and after that the deal alternates every hand.

Melds and deadwood

There are two kinds of meld:

• Sets: 3 or 4 cards of the same rank, like three 8s.
• Runs: 3 or more cards in a row in the same suit, like the 4, 5 and 6 of hearts. The ace is low: A-2‑3 is a run, but Q-K-A is not.

Every card that isn't in a meld is deadwood, and it's counted like this:

A card can only be in one meld at a time. Here's a hand with one run and one set:

The queen, king and ace of hearts are not a run, because the ace is low. So the deadwood is the king, queen and ace of hearts plus the 5 of clubs: 10 + 10 + 1 + 5 = 26 points of deadwood. Poozee always melds your hand the best way, with a colored bar under each meld, and shows your deadwood under your cards. (When a card fits a set and a run at once, the best way isn't always obvious; the strategy guide has an example.)

How a hand of gin rummy works

1. Deal. The dealer deals 10 cards to each player, turns the next card face up to start the discard pile, and puts the rest face down as the stock.
2. The first upcard. The non-dealer may take the face-up card or pass. If they pass, the dealer may take it or pass. If both of you pass, the non-dealer must draw from the stock, and normal play starts.
3. Take turns. On your turn, draw one card, from the top of the stock or the top of the discard pile, then discard one card face up.
4. End the hand. After you draw, you may knock (or go gin) instead of discarding normally. If nobody does, the hand ends when the stock runs low.
5. Score, and deal the next hand, until someone reaches 100.

Two details catch new players. You can't discard the card you just took from the discard pile in the same turn. And you always have 10 cards at the end of your turn: 11 after you draw, 10 after you discard.

On Poozee, tap the stock or the discard pile to draw (or press S or D), then tap a card to discard it. While the first upcard is being offered, the stock is locked and a Pass button appears.

How to knock in gin rummy

After you draw, look at your 11 cards. If you can discard one and leave 10 or less deadwood in the other 10, you may knock:

1. Discard your chosen card face down.
2. Lay your 10 cards on the table, sorted into melds and deadwood.
3. The other player (the defender) lays down their melds, then lays off any deadwood that fits your melds.
4. Both players count their deadwood, and the hand is scored.

You never have to knock. Plenty of good players wait for gin instead, which is what the strategy guide's tests favor after the first few turns.

Gin is a knock with no deadwood: all 10 cards are in melds. On Poozee, a knock with no deadwood is gin automatically, and gin is scored at once with no layoffs.

On Poozee, the Knock and Gin buttons light up when you can use them (or press K or G). Tap one, and the cards you could knock with rise up; tap the one to discard face down. The game lays out your melds for you: the arrangement with the least deadwood, and among equal ones, the one that leaves the fewest places for the defender to lay off.

Laying off

After a knock, the defender can get rid of deadwood by adding it to the knocker's melds: a card at either end of a run, or the fourth card of a set of three. Cards can chain, so if the knocker has the 4‑5‑6 of hearts, the defender can lay off the 7 and then the 8. The knocker can't lay anything off on the defender's melds.

Here you knock with 3 deadwood (the 3 of hearts):

27 - 3 = 24 points to you.

The defender lays off the 8 of diamonds on the 5‑6‑7 of diamonds, the jack of diamonds on the three jacks, and the 5 of clubs on the 2‑3‑4 of clubs. That takes them from 50 deadwood down to 27, and you score the difference: 27 - 3 = 24 points.

When the computer knocks on Poozee, the cards you can lay off rise up. Tap each one to lay it off, or tap Lay off best to let the game find the best layoffs, then tap Done.

Gin rummy scoring

Only one player scores in each hand:

The undercut

If the defender's deadwood, after laying off, is equal to or lower than the knocker's, the knock backfires. That's a gin rummy undercut, and the defender scores the difference plus a 25-point bonus. A tie counts as an undercut, so it's still worth 25.

Undercut: 8 - 5 + 25 = 28 points to the defender.

The defender had 20 deadwood before laying off and 5 after, less than your 8, so they score 8 - 5 + 25 = 28 points.

Gin

Gin scores 25 plus all of the defender's deadwood, and the defender can't lay off anything:

Gin: 25 + 27 = 52 points to you.

That's 25 + 27 = 52 points. After a knock, the defender would have laid off the 6 and jack of hearts on your 7‑8‑9‑10 of hearts and kept only 11 deadwood.

When the stock runs low

The last two cards of the stock are never drawn. When a player draws, leaving two cards in the stock, and then discards without knocking, the hand is a draw and nobody scores. So at most 29 cards can be drawn from the stock in a hand. The player who drew that last card can still knock or go gin instead. Poozee warns you on that turn: "Last draw."

Winning the game

The first player to reach 100 points wins the game. Then both players add bonuses:

• Line bonus: 25 points for every hand you won (also called a box bonus).
• Game bonus: 100 points for the winner, or 200 if the loser didn't score at all, which is a shutout.

Say you finish with 104 points from 5 hands won, and the computer has 61 from 3:

If you'd won 3 hands for 100 points and the computer hadn't scored, your total would be 100 + 75 + 200 = 375. Poozee shows this tally at the end of every game.

The bonuses don't change who won: that's always the player who reached 100. Once in a while, though, they leave the loser with the higher total, because a player who won lots of small hands collects more line bonuses than the winner's game bonus makes up for. That happened in 5 of the 2,000 games we describe below, and when it does, Poozee's end screen says so instead of giving a winning margin.

What a dealt hand looks like

We dealt 100,000 deals with Poozee's own shuffle and melded both hands of each, 200,000 hands in all, the best way:

So a dealt hand has at least one meld 40% of the time, and it holds 56.6 points of deadwood on average. Only 162 of the 200,000 hands could have knocked as dealt (10 or less deadwood), about 1 in 1,200, and 4 were dealt gin. Taking the first upcard let the non-dealer knock at once in 0.38% of deals. Almost every hand is built over several turns.

How long a game lasts

We had two of Poozee's Medium computer players, which knock as soon as they can, play 2,000 games (19,666 hands). A game took 9.8 hands on average, and half of all games took between 8 and 12 hands. A hand lasted 11.1 draws on average, counting both players and both piles. Here's how the hands ended:

The player who won a hand scored 17.0 points on average, and 4% of games were shutouts. Players who hold out for gin see far more gins; the strategy guide measures that.

House rules: how Poozee compares

Gin rummy has many versions. Here's what Poozee does, compared with the rules published by Bicycle and other common variations:

Keep playing

• Play Gin Rummy against the computer, with Hint when you're stuck
• Gin Rummy strategy: when to knock, tested over 10,000 hands
• How to play Spades and how to play Euchre, for four players
• Play Hearts, another classic card game against the computer