Welcome to Continental Rummy!

Continental Rummy is a card game that requires strategy and skill. It is played over a series of seven rounds, with each round presenting unique challenges. To succeed in this game, you’ll need to create sequences and sets of cards. Get ready for an exciting journey!

Let’s start with trios, which are sets of three cards. You can even have a trio with two cards of the same suit. For example, a trio can be made up of two 3 of Clubs and one 3 of Hearts. Flexibility is key!

The Cards and the Deal

Before we dive into the game, make sure you have two decks of cards and two jokers on hand. Shuffle all the cards together thoroughly, and then have each player pick one card from the deck. The player with the lowest card becomes the first dealer, so choose wisely! The first dealer shuffles the cards once more and deals them out to the players.

When I’m playing a card game, I know that each hand requires a different number of cards to be dealt. Once all of the cards have been dealt, the remaining ones are placed in the center of the playing space, creating the draw pile. To start the game, I flip over the top card from the draw pile and it becomes the discard pile.

THE CONTRACTS

Hand	Contract	Deal
First	Two Trios	Seven Cards
Second	One Trio & One Run	Eight Cards
Third	Two Runs	Nine Cards
Fourth	Three Trios	Ten Cards
Fifth	Two Trios & One Run	Eleven Cards
Sixth	One Trio & Two Runs	Twelve Cards
Seventh	Three Runs	Thirteen Cards

In the world of card games, aces can be either high (J,Q,K,A) or low (A,2,3,4). There’s a catch though – you can’t go around the corner (Q,K,A,2,3).

Here’s an interesting fact for you: a trio can consist of more than one Joker. If a trio includes two Jokers, the value of the non-Joker card determines the trio. For instance, a trio consisting of (10, Joker, Joker) counts as a trio of 10’s.

Now, let’s talk about how the game is played. It all starts with the player to the left of the dealer. At the beginning of your turn, you have two options – you can draw one card from the top of the draw pile or from the discard pile. Once you’ve made your choice, your turn ends when you discard one card to the discard pile.

That’s the gist of it – have fun playing!

So, here’s the deal. If you decide not to pick a card from the pile that’s been discarded, anyone else can grab it. But wait! There’s a catch. If they snag that card, they have to pick another one from the pile at the top, too. And get this—they don’t have to throw away any cards. The extra card they draw as a penalty is just like a little surprise. But remember, they’ve gotta do all this before they finish their turn by chucking a card. Now, if more than one person is eyeing that card like a juicy steak, the player sitting to the left of the person taking their turn gets it. Makes sense, right?

When it’s my turn, I can lay down the cards if I have the correct combination. This is called “dropping” the cards. I only drop the cards that are part of the contract. Any extra cards I have can be played on runs and trios that have already been dropped. Once I drop the required combinations and get rid of my last card, the hand is finished. Now it’s time to calculate the score.

Just a heads up, when cards are dropped, they become community cards that anyone can use. However, you can’t play on them until you’ve met the contract for the current hand and dropped your own cards.

JOKERS

During your turn, you have the option to move Jokers that are part of a run you’ve already dropped. You can replace the Joker with a card of its actual value. For example, if you’ve dropped the run A,2,3,Joker,5 and you need to get rid of a 4, you can move the Joker to the end of the run and insert the 4 in its correct place. The new run would then be A,2,3,4,5,Joker. If the Joker is at the beginning or end of a run, you can also move it to another run. But keep in mind that you can’t move a Joker if there are only three cards left in the run.

SCORING

In the game, you can earn points based on the cards you have left in your hand. When you get rid of all your cards and end the round, you earn zero points.

A Joker card is worth 50 points.

King through 10 are worth 10 points each.

Number cards 9 through 2 are worth their face value, so a 9 is 9 points, an 8 is 8 points, and so on.

If you can get rid of all your cards in one turn, you can subtract 10 points from your score.

If you can get rid of all your cards in one turn, you can subtract 10 points from your score.