Ruling — Gin Rummy

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Gin Rummybg-25574-en-1e

Because the sources describe different varieties of the game (Single-Pack Rum, Poker Rum, Poker Gin, and Double-Pack Rum), the rules for playing depend on the specific version being played:

Single-Pack Rum

1. The player to the left of the dealer begins by taking the face-up card, if it suits them, or the top card of the stock.[1]

2. If the top card of the stock is taken, it is put into the hand without being shown.[1]

3. The player may lay out any combination of three cards they hold, though they are not obliged to do so.[1]

4. The player must discard a card, face up, to replace the card drawn.[1]

5. The discard is placed beside the stock, covering any card already there.[1]

6. A player may lay out no more than three cards at one time.[1]

7. A player may add one card from their hand to a combination already laid out by another player.[1]

8. A player may add a card to a combination they laid out themselves.[1]

9. Players continue in turn to the left, drawing, laying out, and discarding.[2][1]

10. The game ends when a player gets rid of their last card and calls out.[2][1]

11. The last card may be removed by laying it out in combination or by discarding it if it is the only card left.[2]

Poker Rum

1. Each player, in turn to the left of the dealer, draws a card from the stock or the discard pile.[3]

2. The player discards one card in its place, face up.[3]

3. A player may lay down combinations only when they can show their whole hand and their deadwood is fifteen or less.[3]

4. A player is not obliged to lay down even if they meet the deadwood requirement.[3]

5. The game ends as soon as any player can show down their hand.[3]

6. The player lays out combinations, pushes them aside, and announces the pip value of their deadwood after discarding a card in place of the one drawn.[3]

7. Each other player, in turn to the left, then lays down their hand and pushes aside all combinations held.[3]

Poker Gin

1. This follows the rules of Poker Rum, but the deadwood must not exceed ten points.[4]

2. After a call for a show-down, players may add any of their odd cards to the combinations laid out by the caller.[4]

Double-Pack Rum

1. Ten cards are given to each player, one at a time.[5]

2. The next card is turned up and laid beside the stock to start the discard pile.[5]

3. A player may lay out any number of cards or combinations at one time.[5]

4. A player can lay out cards only during their proper turn, after drawing a card.[5]

5. A player may add as many cards as they please to any combinations already on the table, whether their own or other players'.[5]

6. If a joker is used as the interior of a sequence, it must remain there.[5]

7. If a joker is at the end of a sequence, another player may move it to the other end (placing it crossways) if they can replace it with a card or add a card to the sequence below the joker.[5]

8. A joker that has been moved cannot be moved again.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook · p.2 · SINGLE-PACK RUM.

[2] RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook · p.2 · SINGLE-PACK RUM.

[3] RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook · p.3 · POKER RUM.

[4] RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook · p.3 · POKER GIN.

[5] RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook · p.4 · DOUBLE-PACK RUM.

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 88 ms · ask 7602 ms · total 7691 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7691 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "There are several varieties of this game, and quite a number of ways of playing them, but the standard method, as adopted by the best clubs, is that here given. The principal divisions of the game are those played with the single pack, and those played with the double pack and two jokers.", "headingPath": "RUM.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "CARDS. The full pack of fifty-two cards is used, ranking from the K Q J down to the ace, the suits having no rank. The ace may also be used in sequence with the king as the top of a sequence. PLAYERS. Any number from two to six may play, but four or five makes the best game. CUTTING. The cards are s", "headingPath": "SINGLE-PACK RUM.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "CARDS. In this variety of the game, the A K Q J are worth ten points each, the ace eleven, and the remaining cards their face value. The ace may be used as the top of a sequence Q K A, or the bottom of A 2 3, but not as part of a round-the-corner, K A 2. DEALING. Ten cards are always given to each p", "headingPath": "POKER RUM.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "Public domain · Foster's Complete Hoyle, 1914 revision · Project Gutenberg ebook #53881 · extracted 2026-08-04 Chapter 'RUM.' - source transcription lines 37260-37445. Text reproduced verbatim; Unicode playing-card glyphs transliterated to rank-and-suit notation so they survive text extraction.", "headingPath": "from Foster's Complete Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of Games by R. F. Foster Revised and Enlarged to October, 1914", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "Each player in turn to the left draws, lays out and discards in this manner until some player gets rid of his last card, when he calls out, and the game comes to an end. The last card in a player's hand may be got rid of by laying it out in combination, or by discarding it if it is the only card lef", "headingPath": "SINGLE-PACK RUM.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "CARDS. This game is always played with two full packs of fifty-two cards each and two jokers, all shuffled together and used as one. The ace may be high or low in sequences. DEALING. Ten cards are given to each player, one at a time, and the next card is turned up and laid beside the stock to start ", "headingPath": "DOUBLE-PACK RUM.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "This is a variety of poker rum in which the deadwood must not exceed ten points and each player is allowed not only to put aside his own combinations after the call for a show-down comes, but may add any of his odd cards to the combinations laid out by the one who calls for a show-down. Suppose that", "headingPath": "POKER GIN.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SINGLE-PACK RUM.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SINGLE-PACK RUM.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "POKER RUM.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "POKER GIN.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DOUBLE-PACK RUM.", "sharpsignalDocId": 225}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 225 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 225 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.90260 of 2382 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 25, 2026 16:18 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	RUM.	p.2	0.048916 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	289
#2	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	SINGLE-PACK RUM.	p.2	0.048652 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	POKER RUM.	p.3	0.047131 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	from Foster's Complete Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of Games by R. F. Foster Revised and Enlarged to October, 1914	p.1	0.047123 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	295
#5	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	SINGLE-PACK RUM.	p.2	0.045928 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	DOUBLE-PACK RUM.	p.4	0.045921 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	POKER GIN.	p.3	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 7 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	RUM.	p.2	#1	0.048916 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	SINGLE-PACK RUM.	p.2	#5	0.045928 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	POKER RUM.	p.3	#3	0.047131 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	from Foster's Complete Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of Games by R. F. Foster Revised and Enlarged to October, 1914	p.1	#4	0.047123 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	POKER GIN.	p.3	#7	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	DOUBLE-PACK RUM.	p.4	#6	0.045921 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	SINGLE-PACK RUM.	p.2	#2	0.048652 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	SINGLE-PACK RUM.	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	SINGLE-PACK RUM.	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	POKER RUM.	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	POKER GIN.	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Gin Rummy — Rulebook (corpus doc 225)	DOUBLE-PACK RUM.	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 88 ms · first delta 1868 ms · total 7691 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 88 ms · ask 7602 ms · gateway work 7691 ms · total 7691 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2954
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 765
tok/sec: 132.4 tok/sec — 765 output tokens in 5.779 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 45s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 4s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 151), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.