Gin Rummy is the classic two-player card game. You each hold 10 cards and take turns drawing and discarding to build melds — runs of the same suit or sets of the same rank. When your leftover cards, the deadwood, are worth 10 or less, you can knock and score the difference. First player to 100 wins. Free in your browser, no sign-up.
Goal: arrange your hand into melds, keep your deadwood low, and knock before your opponent does.
| Result | Score |
|---|---|
| Knock | Opponent's deadwood minus yours |
| Gin (no deadwood) | Opponent's deadwood plus 25 |
| Big gin (all 11 meld) | Opponent's deadwood plus 31 |
| Undercut | Difference plus 25 to the defender |
After a knock, the defender may lay off spare cards onto the knocker's melds to cut their own deadwood. Gin blocks that, which is why a gin hand is worth waiting for.
Three AI difficulty levels (easy, medium, hard) from the menu. The game handles the full first-turn upcard ritual, blocks the illegal move of discarding the card you just drew from the pile, and scores gin, big gin, and undercuts. If only two cards are left in the stock the hand is dead and no one scores. Install it as an app from your browser menu to play offline.
Gin Rummy was devised in 1909 by Elwood T. Baker, a whist teacher in New York, as a faster form of the older game Rummy. It became a Hollywood favourite in the 1930s and 1940s and remains a staple two-player card game in the English-speaking world.