The goal
In Rummy you want to be the first player to lay down every card in your hand. When you go out, every card the other players still hold is worth points to you.
The deal
Two players get ten cards each. With three or four players it is seven, with five or six it is six. An ace counts one in your hand. In a run it may sit low (ace, two, three) or high (queen, king, ace), but a run never wraps from king to ace to two.
The rest of the deck is the stock, face down. One card is turned up to start the discard pile. The player after the dealer goes first. The deal moves one seat along after every hand.
The play
Start your turn by drawing one card, from the stock or from the top of the discard pile. You may even throw back the card you just took from the pile. Nothing forbids it.
A set is three or four cards of one rank in different suits. Lay one down whenever you hold it.
A run is three or more cards in sequence in one suit. You may lay down as many melds as you like on one turn.
You may also lay off a card onto any meld on the table, your own or an opponent's. Once a meld is down it belongs to the table, and anyone may add to it. Several cards can go onto a run in one move, at either end. A set stops at four, one of each suit.
End your turn by discarding one card, unless you have just emptied your hand. When the stock runs out, the pile under its top card is shuffled into a new stock, up to eight times a hand. A host may switch this off. If a draw finds nothing to rebuild from, the hand ends with nobody out and nobody scores. So does a hand where 24 turns in a row take the pile and lay nothing down.
You may go out by melding or laying off your last card. No discard is owed. A host may turn on Discard to go out. Then a meld or lay-off that would empty your hand is refused ("You have to keep a card to discard."), and your last card must go to the pile.
Shed expensive cards early. A king still in your hand when somebody goes out is ten points to them. Watch the pile. The card a player takes tells you what they are building, so think twice before throwing one that fits it. Melding early shrinks what you give away if someone else goes out. Holding back to go out in one turn doubles the hand. Weigh the two every turn.
Scoring
Only the player who goes out scores. They collect the value of every card still in the other hands. An ace is one, tens and face cards are ten, and the rest count their face value.
Go out having melded or laid off nothing on any earlier turn and you have gone rummy. The whole total is doubled.
Winning
Hands are played until somebody reaches the target: five hundred by default, and a host may choose anything from 100 to 1000. Ranked play uses two hundred. A tie for the top score at or over the target deals another hand. A single leader wins. After 150 hands the leader wins, and a tie there has no winner. Only a player dealt into the last hand can win on it. A player who leaves and is not back before their reconnect time runs out ends the game for everyone.
