Gin Rummy Strategy

From either the stock pile or from the discard pile, the player chooses the top card. You cannot disclose the picked card from the stock pile to the other player. Your next step will be to discard on card, face up, onto the discard pile. The challenge is if you picked up a card from the discard pile, you must put a different card back onto the discard pile.

Cards are played in either sets or runs. A set is three or more cards of the same status. Any card that is not part of a set or a run is called deadwood. For example, a 8 of hearts, a 8 of diamonds and a 8 of spades. A run is three or more cards that are played in sequential order, but of the same suit. For example, an 8 of hearts, a 9 of hearts and a 10 of hearts.

When it is the player’s turn, he may “knock” if he has ten or lesser deadwood points. If he has NO deadwood points, he must knock, and is termed to have “gone gin”. To knock, a player puts discards face down and puts his sets and runs out on the table so the other player can see them. Once the deadwood cards are separated out, the other player can lay off any deadwood cards that fit into the knocking player’s runs or sets.

So, if a knocking player has a set of three Jacks, and the other player has one Jack, that player can lay his Jack on the other three Jacks and lower his deadwood count by ten points. If a player has “gone gin”, the other player cannot “lay off” and therefore cannot lower his deadwood count. If the player is knocking he is not allowed to lay his cards off on the other player’s meld.