Continental Rummy
House Rules

The pack

1. Two standard decks, always, whatever the player count.
2. Jokers number one more than the players who start the game. Six players, seven jokers.
3. That count is fixed for the whole game. Players busting out does not remove jokers — six starters who dwindle to three are still playing with seven.
4. Jokers are wild.

Deal and turn

1. Ten cards to each player. The next card starts the discard pile; the rest is the stock.
2. On your turn you draw exactly one card — either the top of the stock or the top of the discard pile. You may not dig deeper into the pile.
3. You then discard one card, face up, ending your turn.
4. You do not draw on the turn you knock. See 4.
5. If the stock runs out before anyone ends the hand, reshuffle the discard pile into a fresh stock and carry on.

Melds

1. Sets — three or more cards of the same rank.
2. Runs — three or more consecutive cards in the same suit.
3. Aces play high (Q–K–A) or low (A–2–3), but runs do not wrap: K–A–2 is not a run.
4. Jokers are wild and may stand for any card in any meld, with no limit per meld — 9♣ joker joker is a legal set.
5. Duplicates are fine. Two decks means two of every card, and 7♠ 7♠ 7♥ is a legal set.
6. Sets have no size ceiling. Five or six of a rank is legal if you can assemble it.

Ending the hand

Four ways, each declared on your own turn. A knock and a close are alternatives — you cannot do both.

1. A knock is declared before drawing. You do not draw and do not discard; the 2 or 3 still in your hand counts against you as normal.
2. A close means melding all ten and discarding the card you drew. It is worth ten points off your total.
3. A continental is ten cards of one suit, jokers standing for any suit. No melds required. It is worth thirty-five points off your total, and play carries on.
4. A straight flush continental — those ten cards in sequence — wins the match outright.

Everyone else then reveals. Cards forming valid melds in your own hand cost nothing; everything left over is counted against you.

Counting

1. An ace is 15 at all times except for a player whose running total is exactly 99, where it counts 1. Ninety-eight or a hundred gets no relief — only 99.
2. At the count, jacks are wild: each may stand for any value of any suit.
3. You may use that deliberately against your own interest — declining to melt a jack into a meld in order to steer your total into the 90–100 window and set up a buy back.
4. Totals may go below zero. Closes and continentals are worth points off, and there is no floor.

The match

Scores accumulate hand to hand. Low is good. Each player brings their own cash and plays off that stack; separately, the table agrees a rebuy stake before dealing — usually $5, $10, $25 or $50.

1. A player whose total reaches 101 or more is eliminated immediately, with no recourse.
2. A player whose total lands in the window 90–100 may buy back in.
3. Buying sets your score to the second-lowest score still in the game — not the lowest. Heads-up there is only one other score, so that one stands.
4. The window can be re-entered. Every buy costs double the last one, and the ladder is per player — someone buying for the first time always pays the base stake, however many times anyone else has bought.
5. When more than one player is in the window at once, they declare in rotation starting to the dealer’s left.
6. The pot in the middle is fed by rebuy money and by one share of every hand (see 7). It goes to whoever wins the match, or is split evenly under 6.7.
7. Once only two players remain, if their totals are ever within 10 points of each other after a hand, the pot is split evenly and the match ends. This is mandatory, not an offer.

Money at the table

What each ending pays

Every player still in pays one share when a hand ends. One of those shares goes to the pot rather than to the winner — so the winner takes one share fewer than there are payers. Every price is a fraction of the table stake, so raising the stake raises all of them together.

The joker bounty

1. A player counting three or more jokers in hand is paid for every one of them.
2. The rate is 20% of the table stake per joker, and every other player still in pays it. Three jokers at a $50 table, four-handed, collects $90.
3. Two jokers pays nothing. The threshold is three.

The feeding penalty

1. A feeder covers the whole collection, the pot’s share included. The winner still takes the same amount.
2. A player who feeds the next seat three helpful cards in a row — including a duplicate they should have known was useful — pays the whole table’s fees for that hand.
3. The feeder’s payment replaces what the other losers owe. The winner collects their usual total; it simply all comes from one pocket. The other losers pay nothing.

Notes on play

The discard pile is the whole information game

Nothing is ever laid down, so no one sees a single meld until the hand ends. Everything you know about the other hands you learned from what people threw away and what they picked up. Playing attentively here means tracking discards, because there is nothing else to track.

Closing is worth more than winning the hand

A close swings you ten points the right way and costs everyone else their leftovers. Over a long game the closer’s edge compounds — and a continental at thirty-five points off is worth chasing even though it no longer ends anything.

Jokers cut both ways

A joker is 15 against you unmelded, so hoarding is expensive. But three of them at the count pays, which means a hand that has gone bad can still be worth holding jokers in rather than dumping them.

Near the line, cheap beats good

At 87 points the goal is no longer to win the hand — it is to keep the hand small enough to land in the buy window instead of past it. A knock holding a 2 costs you two points and keeps you alive. Playing on for a close risks twenty and ends your match.

Heads-up, the gap is the whole game

Once two remain, closing to within ten points forces an even split. The player who is behind wants that split; the player ahead has to keep the gap open, which means declining safe cheap hands they would otherwise take.