A question about a minor rules clarification in Gin Rummy. I realize the game has a number of variants.
One general rule is that if you go out with a “gin hand” (all ten cards melded with no deadwood) you get some bonus points (20 or 25 depending on what rules you follow).
But there’s also a variant that allows you to go for a “big gin”. This is when you have a gin hand with ten cards melded but you want to press your luck so you don’t knock. Instead you wait until your next turn and then draw another card. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to fit this new card into one of your melds and you now knock (without the usual discard) with eleven melded cards instead of ten. Knocking with a big gin gets you a bonus (30 or 31 points) and your opponent doesn’t get to lay off their deadwood.
All of which leads to my question. What happens in the rare case where you have a gin hand but decide to risk one more turn to try for a big gin. But then your opponent knocks on their turn before you have your chance. Do you still get the gin hand bonus if you weren’t the one who knocked?
Definitely not. You get the undercut score for having zero which of course will be less than the deadwood value of the knocker who knocked instead of going gin. That’s what I infer from the rules at Rummy Games.com’s Gin Rummy page.
That’s why I said inferred. If your opponent knocks, you get to meld or lay off the cards you have in your hand. While you did have a gin in hand, you did not go gin so all you could do is meld and lay off all of your cards. That leaves you a deadwood count of zero. The only way for your opponent to have zero when knocking is to go gin. As the opponent did not, that means you got the undercut. Since it’s not possible for you to have a big gin in hand (as that’s an eleven-card hand, not ten) when your opponent knocks, it’s irrelevant if the rule set talks about big gin.
I would say only the person knocking gets any bonuses. That makes the most sense to me, and the regular rules (at pagat.com) state that even if the player holds no unmatched cards when the opponent goes out, they do not get the bonus. I don’t see why whether it’s the variant you call “big gin” should make any difference. There should be some risk to playing on when you can call gin, and not getting gin bonus points would be appropriate. Only knockers can get bonuses.
If you knock with deadwood, you’re taking a gamble that your deadwood count is lower than your opponent’s deadwood count. If you’re correct, you get to score the difference between the counts. If you’re wrong, your opponent gets a bonus for undercutting you on the count. That’s the whole reason for the undercut bonus.
Oh, I phrased that wrong. I mean only the gin bonus. In the Pagat rules and others I’ve seen, it says the person who called gin gets the bonus and any deadwood points. That says to me clearly that even if the other person has gin, they don’t get points. They have to be the person calling gin.
How did we play? Penny a point, nickel a box, quarter a game. We never adjusted for inflation.