Friday, September 5, 2008

Who changed the rules on me?

On Wednesday I saw someone on my friends list playing Gin Rummy. Eh? When did this game come out? Apparently just that day. Without even playing it or finding out any information about it I bought it and downloaded it. Come on, it's Gin Rummy. How hard would it be to learn how to play that game?

Plenty.

I've been playing Gin Rummy since I was about 8 years old. I still remember the first time I starting winning against my older sister and brother. After I won three or four hands in a row they suddenly didn't want to play any more. I think Gin Rummy was the only game, besides Canasta, that me and my siblings could play without some kind of argument breaking out over how someone was playing. It was a game we took seriously and we play it competitively too. When my sister was in labor with her first child we played Gin Rummy to pass the time. She almost always won. When I started to win more and more I knew her labor was increasing. I could have played much longer than we did, but after a while my sister couldn't keep up the pace.

I know how to play Gin Rummy. I love playing Gin Rummy. But all that came crashing down when I played the Xbox Live Arcade version of the game.

In the first game I never even scored a point. And whoever heard of "knocking"? When I started the game I thought it was laughable that there would be a "tutorial" for the game. You either know how to play it and so you'd want to get the game or your not interested. But after the first game I didn't have a clue as to what was going on. The second game wasn't much better and yet I still refused to go through the tutorial to figure out how they changed the rules on me.

I played it a third time last night and finally figured out what "knocking" was. And I don't like it. Gin Rummy is all about the patience and strategy to get a complete hand and go out before anyone else does. It's not about going out with a less than complete hand, i.e. "knocking". It feels cheap to "knock" and I don't like it. I did manage to get "Gin" on one hand and go out completely. No extra cards. No leftovers. Nothing. THAT'S the way Gin Rummy is suppose to be played. I won the hand and picked up a couple of achievements but there was a time there when I thought I had made a huge mistake in buying the game without playing it first.

I think I will have to spend some time in the tutorials just so I know how the system is going to play the game. I hope their convoluted rules don't ruin my love of the game. But I should warn you if you ever play a game with me online. This is the first game I ever got competitive about and so my competitive drive in Gin Rummy is stronger than anything else I play. If you know me that's saying something. They only way you're going to be able to beat me is because I don't know the rules the developer put in this game. Until then, be prepared to be annihilated. Who said card games can't be deadly?

3 comments:

metallicorphan said...

i used to play every christmas with my mum and grandma

i think you can knock when you have under 7 card score ...say you have 3 queens and 3 jacks and a 6..then you can 'knock' for 6

i think its a silly number that it all adds up to(84 or something like that)..and the object is NOT to get to 84

so the faster you can knock for a number under 7,the more chance of your opponents having more than 7,or maybe not even having a hand and all their cards go towards their score

say i had 3 cards of 2,and 3 cards of 6's..and then a 4,and i knocked for 4,and caught my mum out,she had like no sets so all the cards went towards her score and it added up to 30 or 40...so another of those and then she would be out,if she gets to over 84 then it would carry on between me and my grandma..and then whoever wins gets the kitty ;)


you can also knock for none...eg 3 jacks,4 aces

OR...you can just go for Gin rummy..which you prolly know as a run 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 of hearts for example..and then you win the kitty,so try and go for the long way to win and knock the other out or try and go for the score and knock them out that way


thats how we had been playing it since about 1984 anyway,LOL



for me the rules to Black Jack keep changing...but thats another story

Anonymous said...

I was able to download the demo Sat, but by Sun I had DNS issues and couldn't connect to Live. Once I can get back online (I'm on the work PC right now) I'll get the full game and show you how it's done ;p

Pengwenn said...

I think the knock number is 10 in this game. Whatever you're left with after you knock has to be less than 10. As far as I can tell you have to get to 200 points to win overall. I still haven't looked up the rules but I'm getting a better understanding of how to play it.

Orphie or Zen if either of you gets the game I'd be happy to play with you anytime.