You're reading this for a live table
That round plays the standard rules — everything below applies as written.
The rulebook
How to play Rummy
Build sets and runs, lay them face up on the table, and be the first to shed every card in your hand. Whoever goes out collects what everyone else was caught holding. First past 250 takes the match.
Step 1
The deck and the deal
One standard 52-card deck. Ten cards each heads-up, seven at three or four players, six beyond that — fewer cards as the table grows, which is what keeps a stock worth drawing from. One card is turned face up to start the discard pile; the rest is the stock.
Step 2
Your turn: draw one, then throw one
Every turn is the same rhythm. Draw one card — off the top of the stock, or off the discard pile. Only the face-up card is available here; what's underneath is out of play and out of sight, which is what makes remembering the discards worth doing. Then meld as much as you like, and finish by discarding one card face up.
Step 3
Melds: sets and runs
A set is three or four cards of the same rank. A run is three or more cards in sequence in one suit. Melds go face up on the table where everyone can see them, and a meld once laid down stays down — you can't take it back. Where an ace sits in a run is a house rule, and here it runs below the 2 only.
Step 4
Laying off
You may add a card to any meld already on the table — yours or anyone else's — as long as it genuinely extends it. This is the only move in the game that changes a hand size by exactly one; everything else moves cards in blocks of three or more, which is why a table with lay-offs switched off can leave a hand with nothing legal to do.
Step 5
Going out
Shed your last card and the hand ends immediately. You can go out by discarding your final card, or by melding or laying off your whole hand with no discard left to make.
Step 6
Scoring the hand
Whoever goes out collects: they score the total of everyone else's remaining cards, and everyone else scores nothing. Aces are 1, face cards 10, everything else its face value. If a hand ends without anyone going out — the pile runs dry, or the table stalls — the lowest deadwood collects the difference instead, so the hand still pays. The “going rummy” bonus — a doubled hand for laying your whole hand down in one turn — is off here.
Step 7
Winning the match
Hands keep being dealt until someone's cumulative score crosses the target — 250 at this table, and settable when the game is dealt. Highest total takes it, and a tie genuinely splits it: there's no tiebreak rule to appeal to.
Step 8
What this table fixes
Three things aren't offered as options, because changing them would change what the game is. You draw exactly one card and discard exactly one card per turn — every rummy worth the name is built on that rhythm. A meld laid down stays down; melded cards are the only quantity in a hand that moves in one direction, and taking them back would leave a hand with no measure of progress at all. And melds are validated on sight rather than on trust — there's no challenge step, because the table is the only authority on whether a run is real. What an exhausted stock means is decided by the draw rule rather than by which rummy you're playing, and here that means the spent discard pile is turned back over and play continues.