Dealer deals ten cards to each player. Deck goes in the middle; one card turned over to form a discard pile. What happens next?
The way I learned: the non-dealing player can draw the exposed card or the top card from the deck, and then discard a card. Then the dealer can draw the exposed top discard card or the next card from the deck, and discard a card. Play continues until someone has 10 or fewer deadwood points, and then he can knock.
What might be the actual rules: the non-dealing player can draw the exposed card or pass. Then the dealer can draw the non-exposed card or pass. THEN the non-dealer can draw the top card from the deck, and then discard a card. Then the dealer can draw the exposed top discard card or the next card from the deck, and discard a card. Play continues thusly as above.
It’s true that as long as all players agree to play a game with a certain set of rules, those rules govern that game.
But it will certainly handicap me when I sit down to play chess with you and am surprised when you object to my attempt to return my captured queen to the board by using one of my three Royal Lifelines.
I have always played where the dealer gives his opponent 11 cards and and himself (or herself) 10 cards. The opponent then makes a discard and the dealer has the choice between the top card or the discard. And so on.
And I have played gin rummy several different areas of the country.
Like most people have probably done already, I Googled ‘official gin rummy rules’ (without the quotes), I was unable to get on to most of the sites from work as we have a filter blocking ‘Games’ but Wikipedia goes for option 2, FWIW. That’s also the way I learned, from a book of card games.
But unlike, say, chess or poker, there doesn’t seem to be a governing body, so I doubt you’ll get any better than what Hoyle’s has to say on the matter. It’s just one of those details that you need to clarify with your opponent before starting to play (or if there were a gin rummy tournament, it would be clarified by the organisers). Whichever of the two versions mentioned in the OP is used doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of the game (unlike the chess hypothetical); both are designed to ensure that the dealer isn’t subjected to the disadvantage of never being able to access the first card turned up.
I would personally be against the version with 11 cards dealt to one player as that seems to confer a significant advantage to that player compared with the other two versions, as he gets to decide which 11th card the opposing player gets to see, though I guess it evens out in the long run since the dealing alternates anyway.
Note that I am not an authority on the subject - I had forgotten the rule about needing 10 or fewer points to knock, and I had never played the ‘Big Gin’ rule mentioned in the Wikipedia article (where you get an extra bonus for matching 11 cards).
Actually, Option 1 does just that: if the non-dealing player is permitted to draw from the stock deck, then he discards a card, the dealer never has a chance to get the first discard – it’s now covered by the other player’s discard.
Thank you - I see I had initially misread option 1, for some reason I thought it gave the dealer the option to draw either the card discarded by the opponent, or the card underneath that the opponent didn’t want, for that turn only. But thinking about it, even that is unfair because it makes the dealer choose between two cards, both of which he may want. On that basis, I’m definitely in favour of option 2.
I learned gin rummy from my dad, and he taught me #2 - the non-dealer can take the face-up card or pass; if he passes, the dealer can take the face-up card or pass. The basic principle being that you can’t bury a card in the discard pile without giving the other player a crack at it.
(In #2, when you say, “Then the dealer can draw the non-exposed card or pass,” I’m sure the inclusion of the ‘non-’ was accidental and unintended.)
Incidentally, while I’m sure it’s *not *the Hoyle rules, we always played the variation where that first face-up card determines how few points you need to knock: if the card is 2-10, you need that number or fewer, face cards are treated as a 10, and an ace means you must gin.
That is a valid variation and commonly played. Makes the game a bit more interesting. I don’t mean to imply the game is uninteresting to begin with, as it’s one of my favourites with or without this rule. You can also play that if the up card is a spade, scores for that round are doubled, which introduces a bit more randomness to the scoring.
I have never played that rule but it’s not a totally unreasonable one, though I would question why you would leave two cards unshown - seems a bit unfair if one of them is the card one player needs to get gin. I don’t think I have ever got to the bottom of the deck because with halfway competent players, someone should have knocked long before then in the vast majority of cases. But if I did, I think I would simply shuffle all the discard pile thoroughly and start again.
As I said before, I am no way an authority on this, I have only ever played casually.
I honestly can’t remember. It happens so rarely IME (on the order of a once-a-decade event) that it’s only barely worth having a rule for.
If I were going to make up a rule, it would be to play to the last card in the deck. If the person who picks up the last card doesn’t knock, then if the other player can’t pick up his discard and knock, it’s a draw. If one of your gin cards is the last card in the deck, the odds against your seeing that card are pretty long, but they shouldn’t be zero.