Gin Rummy Rules: How to Play, Knock, and Score

Gin rummy rules come down to one simple race: arrange your ten cards into sets and runs faster than your opponent, while keeping whatever doesn’t fit — your deadwood — as low as possible. It’s a two-player card game built entirely around a standard 52-card deck, a shuffled stock pile, and a single discard that starts every hand. This page covers standard two-player gin rummy the way it’s commonly played in North American homes and clubs, and notes where Hollywood gin, Oklahoma gin, and multi-player versions do things differently.

Gin rummy rules: how to play gin rummy in a nutshell

Everything below describes standard two-player gin rummy: ten-card hands, a knock threshold of ten deadwood points or fewer, and a game that ends once a player’s running score passes 100. Where a popular variant changes one of those numbers or adds a twist, that’s flagged in its own section rather than mixed in as if it were universal.

Setup and the deal

Shuffle a full 52-card deck and deal ten cards to each player, one at a time. Place the rest face down as the stock, then flip the top card of the stock face up next to it to start the discard pile — this is the upcard. The diagram below shows the layout right after the deal: each player holds a ten-card hand, the stock sits face down in the middle, and the upcard sits face up on top of the discard pile beside it.

For the very first turn only, the non-dealer gets first option on the upcard: take it, or decline it. If they decline, the dealer may take that same upcard instead. If both players decline it, the non-dealer draws the top card of the stock face down and the hand proceeds normally from there, with no further option to take an upcard later in the hand (the discard pile is open for anyone to take only at the top, on a normal turn).

How a turn works

After the opening turn, every turn has the same two steps: draw one card, either the top of the stock (face down, unseen) or the top of the discard pile (face up, seen by both players), then discard one card from your hand face up onto the discard pile. You always hold ten cards between turns.

The goal is to organize your hand into sets (three or four cards of the same rank, such as 9♣-9♦-9♠) and runs (three or more consecutive cards in a single suit, such as 4♥-5♥-6♥-7♥; aces are always low, so A-2-3 is valid but Q-K-A is not). Any card that isn’t part of a set or run is deadwood, and each deadwood card counts toward your deadwood total at face value: number cards count their number, aces count one, and jacks, queens, and kings count ten each.

Knocking, going gin, and laying off

Once your deadwood totals ten points or fewer, you may knock instead of discarding normally: discard your last card face down, then lay your remaining cards face up, grouped into sets and runs with any deadwood set off to the side. If every one of your ten cards fits into a set or run — zero deadwood — you go gin instead of knocking, which pays a bigger bonus (see below).

After a knock (never after gin), your opponent gets to lay off: they can attach any of their own unmatched cards onto your exposed melds — a fourth card of a rank you’ve shown, or another card extending either end of a run — before counting whatever deadwood is left in their own hand. Laying off can shrink an opponent’s deadwood total enough to flip the result of the hand.

Worked examples: knock, gin, and undercut scoring

These three hands use the bonuses most common in North American home play: 20 points for gin, and a 10-point bonus for an undercut (some groups use 25 instead — agree on a number before you start, since it’s the single most common house-rule variation).

1. A knock where the knocker is lower. The knocker lays down the run 5♥-6♥-7♥-8♥, the set 9♣-9♠-9♦, and three deadwood cards: 4♠, 2♦, and A♣, for 4 + 2 + 1 = 7 deadwood points. Their opponent shows the set 10♣-10♦-10♥ and the run J♠-Q♠-K♠, but none of their remaining cards extend either of the knocker’s melds, leaving Q♥, 8♦, 6♣, and 5♠ as deadwood — 10 + 8 + 6 + 5 = 29 points. The knocker’s 7 is lower than the opponent’s 29, so the knocker scores the difference: 29 − 7 = 22 points.

2. Gin, with the gin bonus. One player lays down all ten cards as melds with no deadwood at all: the run A♠-2♠-3♠-4♠, the run 5♦-6♦-7♦, and the set K♣-K♥-K♦. Because this is gin, not a knock, the opponent gets no chance to lay off — their hand is simply counted as it sits: the set J♣-J♦-J♥ and the run 2♣-3♣-4♣ are melded, leaving K♠, Q♥, 9♦, and 7♠ as deadwood, worth 10 + 10 + 9 + 7 = 36 points. The player who went gin scores the 20-point gin bonus plus the opponent’s full deadwood: 20 + 36 = 56 points.

3. An undercut, where the defender ties or beats the knocker. The knocker lays down the run 2♥-3♥-4♥-5♥, the set Q♣-Q♦-Q♠, and deadwood 5♣, 3♠, and A♦ (5 + 3 + 1 = 9 points), then knocks. Their opponent shows the set 7♣-7♦-7♥ and the run 9♠-10♠-J♠, with 6♥, 3♦, 2♣, and A♠ left over. Because 6♥ extends the knocker’s heart run, the opponent lays it off, dropping their deadwood to just 3♦, 2♣, and A♠ — 3 + 2 + 1 = 6 points. Six is lower than the knocker’s nine, so this is an undercut: instead of the knocker scoring, the defender scores the difference plus the undercut bonus: (9 − 6) + 10 = 13 points, and the hand is recorded as a win for the defender, not the knocker.

When the stock runs low

The stock doesn’t last forever. Once only two cards remain face down in the stock after a draw, the hand ends automatically with no score and no winner if the next player doesn’t knock or go gin — the cards are gathered up, reshuffled, and the same dealer deals again. In practice this is rare; most hands end in a knock or gin well before the stock runs that thin.

Scoring and winning the game

Score each hand as shown in the worked examples above: the lower deadwood total wins and scores the difference, a gin win adds 20 points on top of the opponent’s deadwood, and an undercut hands the win and its bonus to the defender instead of the knocker. Keep a running total across hands and keep dealing — the turn to deal passes to the loser of the previous hand — until one player’s cumulative score passes 100 points, which ends the game.

Beyond the 100-point target, many groups tally a few bonuses once the game is over: a 100-point game bonus for the overall winner, a 20-point line (or box) bonus for every individual hand each player won along the way, and, if one player swept every single hand of the game without the other winning even one, a shutout bonus — commonly another 100 points — on top of the game bonus.

Common variations and house rules

This page describes standard two-player gin rummy. A few named variants and house rules change the shape of the game:

• Hollywood gin keeps three running totals on one scoresheet instead of one, but they don’t all start together: your first win posts to column 1 only, your second win posts to columns 1 and 2, and from your third win on, every hand you win posts to all three columns at once.
• Oklahoma gin sets the knock threshold to whatever rank the first upcard shows (an upcard of 7 means you can only knock at 7 deadwood points or fewer instead of the usual ten), and if that upcard is a spade, the whole hand’s score is doubled; games commonly run to 150 points instead of the usual 100.
• Three-player gin rummy has the dealer sit out each hand while the other two play; the loser of a hand deals the next, which rotates who sits out.
• Four-player gin rummy is usually played as two fixed partnerships, with each player running a separate one-on-one game against an opponent from the other team. When both partners on a team win their hands, add the two scores together; when only one partner wins, the team whose winner scored higher scores just the difference between the two results. Four-player games commonly run to 125 points instead of the usual 100.
• Taking the first upcard is itself a house-rule fork: most groups let the non-dealer take or decline it and then let the dealer take or decline it in turn, but some tables skip the option entirely and just deal straight into normal turns.

If you enjoy the tight hand-management of gin rummy, the tile-matching logic in dominoes and the tile-building hands of mahjong both reward the same kind of “organize what you’re holding” thinking, just with different pieces on the table.