Rummy is a family of card games built around a common structure: players draw and discard cards in turn while trying to assemble their hand into melds, either sets of cards sharing a rank or runs of consecutive cards in a suit. The rummy family is generally believed to have taken shape in the nineteenth century, drawing on older matching-card games, and it gave rise to a wide range of well-known regional and commercial variants, including gin rummy and canasta, that share its core draw-discard-and-meld mechanic while varying its scoring and hand structure.
Facts
Disputed
Origin Yearone of two competing origin theories, a rival theory traces rummy to a nineteenth century Chinese mahjong variant westernized as khanhoo rather than to Mexico Originating Regionone of two competing origin theories, a rival theory traces rummy to a nineteenth century Chinese mahjong variant westernized as khanhoo rather than to Mexico Sport
Game Type (category) Game TypeMatching and melding card game group 1 Connections
Ancestor Of
Canasta, Games Canasta, developed in Uruguay in the 1930s, is a member of the Rummy family of card games.
Source The Oxford Guide to Card Games
Gin Rummy, developed in the early 20th century United States, is a two-player variant of Rummy.
Source The Oxford Guide to Card Games
Associated With
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Rummy, Wikipedia
Lead section
Rummy is a group of games related by the feature of matching cards of the same rank or sequence and same suit.
History section
The first is that it originated in Mexico around the 1890s in a game described as Conquian in R.F. Foster's book Foster's Complete Hoyle.
Origin section, second origin theory
The second is that Rummy originated in Asia, and that Rummy was the result of a Mahjong variant named Kun P'ai that was Westernized as Khanhoo by W.H. Wilkinson in 1891.
Origin section, Parlett combined theory
Games scholar David Parlett combines these two theories, and proposes that the Mexican game of Conquian, first attested in 1852, is ancestral to all rummy games.
Related games section, introductory statement
There are a large number of games derived from rummy.
Related games section, family membership sentence
Although in North America the word rummy is often used interchangeably for gin rummy, the term is applicable to a large family of games, including canasta, mahjong and Rummikub.
Lead section, basic goal of melds
The basic goal in any form of rummy is to build melds which can be either sets (three or four of a kind of the same rank) or runs (three or more sequential cards of the same suit) and either be first to go out or to amass more points than the opposition.
Associated With: Gin Rummy, Related games section, gin rummy
Although in North America the word rummy is often used interchangeably for gin rummy, the term is applicable to a large family of games, including canasta, mahjong and Rummikub.
Associated With: Canasta, Related games section, canasta
Although in North America the word rummy is often used interchangeably for gin rummy, the term is applicable to a large family of games, including canasta, mahjong and Rummikub.
View the SourceRummy - Card Game Rules, Pagat
Types of Rummy section, opening paragraph
Rummy games first appeared in the early twentieth century, and are probably derived from the Mexican game Conquian.
Introduction, first sentence
In this large group of draw and discard games, the object is generally to improve one's hand by forming it into sets of matching cards (usually groups of the same rank or sequences in a suit).
Introduction, origin statement
Rummy games seem to be ultimately of Chinese origin.
Basic Rummy section, number of players
The game is best played with two to four players, but up to six can take part.
Object of the Game section
The object of the game is to dispose of all the cards in your hand.
Knock Rummy Games section, Gin Rummy example
Examples of this type are Gin Rummy and Tonk.
Canasta Group heading, opening sentence
This is a particular type of Meld Scoring Rummy with special bonuses for melds of seven cards, known as Canastas.
View the SourceWikidata: Rummy
Wikidata Q756011, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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