Robbers' rummy is a card game for two or more players. It is a variant of German Rummy dating to the early 20th century. Being derived from normal rummy, it emphasises arrangement of cards based on card matching rules (generally simplified, but thereby no less challenging), while abandoning the notions of card discards and scoring entirely.
Description
In Robbers' Rummy, not only are players allowed to lay off to existing melds as in basic Rummy, but they may also completely recombine the cards contained in the melds. In other words, players may 'rob' cards from already-made melds to make new ones. This makes it "much more exciting and engaging than any other [Rummy] variant...". Danyliuk describes it as "a fun, but difficult, variant of Rummy." cards from the shuffled pack, whose remainder, called the stock is placed face-down on the table. The goal of each player is to reduce the number of cards held in hand by placing them on the table, face-up, forming melds. A meld is:
- Either any sequence by rank of three or more cards of the same suit (where the King may be followed by Ace, and 2, and so on),
- Any three or four cards of equal rank, but of distinct suits.
Examples of valid melds:
- On the table are ; Ann holds the second in her hand. She can now take the and the from the table and make a new meld with her .
- On the table lie the and ; Ben holds , and in his hand. He can now combine these cards together with the table cards to form new melds as follows: , and .
Any jokers on the table may be re-used to represent a different card without having to be exchanged as in German Rummy, for example.
A player who was unable or disinclined to place at least one card from their own hand on the table accordingly, must draw one card from the stock into the hand. Alternatively, a player who did place one or more own cards on the table may draw one card from the stock, or must otherwise yield to the next player right away. After having drawn one card, the player at turn may still place any one or more cards on the table, and must then yield to the next player without drawing another card.