Starting of Gin Rummy

At the start of a gin rummy game, each player is dealt ten cards, and the next card is tuned face-up on the table. The goal is to achieve a hand winch fails into groups of three or more cards either of the same face value or in uninterrupted sequence of the same suit. If ail ten cards are used in such combinations, the player bas gin. However, a player can end the game before this point, as long as the face value of the unknotted cards in his hand does flat total more than the value of the turned-up card on the table. To end the game in tins way is to knock, and naturally this situation will come up many more times than the opportunity to go gin. The only time a game must end in gin is when the turned-up card is an ace.

Unfortunately, most players are tempted to hold out in almost every game trying for gin, bypassing chance after chance to knock. This is the worst mistake a gin rummy player can make. That’s why I have selected this as the first rule to give you, and its flout too soon to repeat it: MOST HANDS SHOULD BE PLAYED TO KNOCK.

The name of the game is gin, but that doesn’t mean you play for gin with every hand. Not even with most of thorn. Each hand should be played according to how it sets up and develops, but in the majority of instances this will mean that you should knock at the earliest possible opportunity. It’s no coincidence that the most frequently heard wail arming gin players is, “I should knocked!”

Memorize that rule well. 1f you do, I can assure you more of those nickels or quarters will crone your way than the other players’ in your regular Thursday night garn. Once you’ve committed this mien to the gin rummy computer in your head, then learn when to use it and when not to. Naturally, when an ace is the turn-up card, you have no choice but to go for gin. But say your knock is three. Chances are your gin opportunities will form just as easily, or almost as easily, as your knock opportunities so will the other players’. This kind of situation ceils for shrewd judgment and alertness on your part in setting up and playing your hand.

But let’s take another situation: You and I are playing and you can knock with ten, while I still have twenty points in my hand. You go two or three more picks and you don’t improve your hand; the chances at that point are against your improving it. In the meantime, I’m picking up a steady advantage. While you’re still debating as to what to do, I knock with six. You could have picked up ten points from me; instead, I beat you for four. Or it may be that I’m sitting there with a hand that needs one card to make it jeu. While you’re using up valuable plays trying to improve your hand by a few points, I may pull the card I need out of the deck or even pick it up from one of the discards and gin.

Under less favorable circumstances I might have opened with a safer discard—the Queen of clubs— and would have probably followed it with the Queen of diamonds. The way I played the hand worked out satisfactorily, because a more defensive tack would have cost me the Queen spread.

Don’t speculate that this is mere good fortune. As I have pointed out before, you have to gear your play to the over-all situation and be prepared for continual changes. In this hand, since my opponent did not pick up any of my discards, there was no reason to digress from the strong play I started out with.

The aim of the expert player is always to stay in control of the game. Not only does he determine his own style of play, but he can utilize his plays to force his opponent into a pattern of play that wifi work to his benefit. In other words, vigorous play on my part can force my opponent to play strongly also, even though he may not be in as good a position to do so as I am. On the other side of the coin, defensive play by me can force him to slow down even if he is sitting there with beautiful cards.