Cards, 500 Rummy, Gin Rummy

Sometimes, the basic games are all we need to while away the hours.  Playing cards have been around since at least the 14th century.  There are so many great sites online that have galleries and museum exhibits of playing card history and design, like the International Playing Card Society, the French Playing Card Museum, and others.

Hundreds of different card games can be found throughout history, some rising to popularity and sinking below the radar again, others remaining perennial favorites.  The thousands of card designs are fascinating, with their major regional variations and printing history, quirks and symbolism.  I actually find it sad that the standard Hoyle card designs have taken over and replaced so much of the world's creative variety, and that collecting playing cards has partly devolved into the designs on the back -- cars and bars and cities and animals and tourist traps -- instead of the actual symbols used to play the game.

Anyway, for today, I just want to chat about some of my favorite simple, casual card games: 500 Rummy and Gin Rummy.

I have always like the simplicity of Rummy: just draw cards, match runs, go out, score points. There isn't a whole lot of actual skill or strategy other than keeping the cards that seem more likely to score big and hoping you get those last cards you need, while blocking other players from doing the same.  It's perfect light fare for a gaming day, but you don't have to always keep score.  For some players, just winning some reasonable number of hands is good enough, maybe play to be the first to win 7 hands.  Other players are just obsessive about knowing exactly how many points they won by.  Sure, that works, too.  My Mom said that she and my Dad had a never-ending game of 500 rummy that had reached 50,000 over many years, and they were always a few hundred points apart.  That's a fun tale, and pretty much what you would expect from a game of chance.

Gin Rummy is a fun variation that I played as a kid, and totally forgot about for a few decades until Zynga put out a version with cute tiki-themed characters.  There is a bit more strategy here, since you have to count down the deadwood (unmatched junk) in your hand, and can opt to knock and go out if you have 10 points of deadwood or less.  It's a fun feel for a card game where, for the most part, face cards are avoided like the plague -- if you don't get a good match after two or three draws, you have to start dropping high cards like the trash they are.  Get that deadwood down below 11 and then ... well, the choice of when to knock is not that obvious.  If you knock too soon and an opponent has less deadwood than you, they undercut you and win the hand.  If you wait too long to knock, someone else is likely to knock first, but you might undercut them.  Pros and cons.  There is a reasonable bonus for knocking with a Gin (no deadwood at all).  Just a few extra levels of things to think about.

Now, the various Gin Rummy apps are a mixed lot.  What I find interesting when playing cards against NPC (A.I.) players is how often we feel like they are cheating us.  It sounds like an interesting design problem, trying to design AI routines simulating different skill levels.  The beginner AI's have to be allowed to make really dumb mistakes, things human players would just never do, so the weak end of the fake players feel fake, and the strong end feel like they can see all of our cards.

Just some musings on some quick games.