How to play Rummy: rules and scoring

Goal: Lay all your tiles in runs and groups before anyone else, and score the most over several games.

Setup

A run is three or more consecutive numbers in one colour (red 4-5-6).
A group is three or four of the same number in different colours.
Your first meld must add up to at least 30, from your own tiles only.
After that you may split and rearrange the sets on the table as you like.
Only valid sets may be left at the end of your turn.
If you can’t lay anything, draw a tile from the pool and your turn ends.
A joker stands for any tile.
You can take a joker from the table by putting the right tile in its place, but you must use it in the same turn.

A game ends when someone lays their last tile and calls “Rummy!”.
Everyone else adds up the numbers on their rack and scores the total as a minus; each joker left counts 30.
The winner scores all of those totals combined.
If the pool runs out and nobody can go out, the lowest rack wins.
The others lose the difference between their total and the winner’s; the winner scores the sum of those differences.

The table agrees on how many games to play.
In the official rules a round is one game per player (four games with four players).
After the last game, the highest total wins.

Some tables play to a target score or count a joker as 50.
Okey and 101 Okey are Turkish members of the same family, with an indicator tile and a wild okey.
You can turn on “double for going out in one turn” under house rules.

These are the rules tables argue about most. Agree on them before you start; you can turn them on or off when you set up the game.

A player who lays all their tiles in a single turn, without having laid any before, scores double for that game, and everyone else loses double.