Chinchón (card game)

Chinchón is a Spanish matching card game closely related to gin rummy, sharing that game's basic objective of forming melds of matching-rank sets or same-suit sequential runs from a dealt hand. It is played by two to four players, each dealt seven cards to start, and on each turn a player draws one card from either the face-down stock pile or the face-up discard pile and then discards one card from their hand to keep their hand size constant. A player may choose to meld their cards openly once they judge that the point value remaining in their unmatched cards is lower than what their opponents are likely still holding, ending that hand and forcing a scoring comparison. The most decisive way to end a hand outright is to form a complete seven-card run all in one suit, called a chinchón, which wins the hand immediately regardless of what other players hold. Points accumulate as penalties from cards left unmatched in a player's hand at the end of each hand, and play continues across repeated hands until a player's running penalty total reaches one hundred points or more, at which point the player with the lowest total score is declared the winner.