Gin Rummy Rules - Continued

When Can You Knock? Only when your “deadwood” cards are worth ten points or less. What is Deadwood? Unused cards in your hand which are not part of a meld are called “deadwood” cards. Let’s look at this example hand: 7? 7? 7? 4? 5? 6? A? 2? 5? J? The cards in blue are all melded. The cards in red are all deadwood cards. The A? is one point of deadwood; the 2? is two points; 5? is five points and the J? is ten points. So, the player with this hand has total deadwood of eighteen points and cannot yet knock. Aces are worth one point and any face card is worth the maximum ten points. How Do You Win? Ending the game at the earliest opportunity doesn’t guarantee success. If you knock and your opponent has a better hand, you will lose that game. To knock, or not to knock, that is the question! Only knocking with a perfect hand (ie. no “deadwood”), called a “gin”, guarantees success. Here’s an example of a perfect hand: 2? 2? 2? 4? 5? 6? 7? 8? 9? 10? Once a player has knocked, their cards are automatically laid face-up on the table and sorted into sets and deadwood. If the player has not got Gin, their opponent may lay-off their deadwood cards. Laying-off. Laying-off is an automatic process whereby any deadwood in the opponent's hand is placed onto the sets of the player who knocked, wherever possible. For example, if one of the sets a player knocks with is 2? 2? 2?, and the opponent has the remaining 2? , this 2? is placed onto the knocking player's hand and the value is deducted from their own deadwood total. Scoring The player who wins the hand is the one who has the lowest deadwood total. The difference between the 2 totals is the winning player's score for that hand. The knocking, laying-off and scoring system is demonstrated below:

In the example above, ProPlayer has knocked by discarding the 6 of Hearts. The remaining 10 cards in his hand comprise of 3 sets (the A-A-A, the 7-7-7 and the 4-4-4). His only deadwood (unmatched) card is the 6 of Spades. Its total value is 6, which made it possible for him to knock in the first place (the deadwood value must be 10 or less if you wish to knock). At this point, the cards in GinBot's hand are arranged into sets and deadwood. Where possible, the deadwood is then 'laid-off' (this is completed automatically). In the above example, two sets are made (2-3-4-5 of Clubs and 10-J-Q-K of Clubs). At this point any of GinBot's deadwood cards that could be laid-off would also be subtracted - in this case if he held any Ace, Four or Seven to go with ProPlayer's melds. As he does not his deadwood retains its full face value. GinBot's deadwood total is 12. ProPlayer's is 6. Therefore ProPlayer wins the hand and scores 6 points. There are also 2 ways of earning additional points. If the knocking player has Gin they earn a 25 point bonus, and if the deadwood value of the player who laid-off their cards is less than or equal to the deadwood value of the knocking player, they earn a 25 point undercut bonus. Winning the Game Once these points have been added to the overall scores, play continues with further hands until one of the players has reached the target score for the room (which is shown on the Gin Rummy games page and in the wager details box in the top right corner of the live table). This player has then won the game.