I played a game last weekend that I was told was called Knock Rummy, though it wasn’t like the Knock Rummy that I’ve played before. The person who taught us grew up just north of Baltimore, though I grew up 50 miles from there, if it’s a regional thing.
The basic rules as I remember is as follows.
We played with 5-6 people and 2 decks of cards. Each person was dealt 5 cards, with two of them left facing down. Each card was worth their value, A-1, J&Q-10, King-zero.
On each turn you drew a card from the pile or discard pile. You then had to get rid of one of your cards, either from the three in your hand or one of the down turned cards. You couldn’t see what the down turned card was so a lot of times the next player got lucky and would get a low card. If you discarded a down turned card you then had 4 or 5 cards in your hand.
The point was to get the lowest hand, if you got 3 of a kind then those were worth zero points. You did not have to know what all 5 of your cards were in order to try and get the lowest hand.
When you wanted to knock the next player took a card, laid it down face up and had to keep that card, and then discarded. This goes around the table. If the knocker got the lowest score they got zero points, if they didn’t get the lowest score they got their score plus 10 points. The lowest score still got their points. At the end of the game whoever had the lowest score won.
I’ve been looking around and can not find this card game. It’s not Knock Rummy and I haven’t found a variation yet that’s even similar. Has anyone else played this game and is there an official name for it?