Gin Rummy Online Tales

Gin Tales

Once during tournament play, Danny London and I were partners and had advanced to the final eight. The game was close. I had knocked and won enough points to just win the gin rummy game if Danny could hold the points. He developed his hand late, into the following melds: nines of diamonds, hearts and clubs and the three, four, five and six of clubs. His remaining cards were ace of diamonds, ace of clubs, deuce of hearts and three of spades.
The knock card was an eight. He started to lay down his three cards and four card meld and knock with four however, before he completed the play, he changed his mind and turned over the six of clubs from the end of the meld and knocked with seven. Sure enough, his opponent had the seven of clubs to playoff and would have undercut Danny. Instead, we won the game and advanced to the final four. It would be a happy ending if I could say we won the tournament: however, we came up against two excellent players, Abe Guss from Mexico and AI Filipeli from California. We had a very close game, but unfortunately for us, we lost.

Tournament Championship

One of the most unusual and interesting plays that meant the gin rummy online tournament championship happened in a match between Enrique Ritz from Mexico and Jack Murphy from Las Vegas. They were in the final eight, playing to 300 points. The score was 298 to 269 in Jack's favor.
Jack was dealing and turned up the ace of clubs as the knock card. When Jack examined his hand, he was pleased to see that he had a meld of three queens a meld of the six, seven and eight of diamonds and the ace of hearts, ace of spades, deuce of spades and three of clubs.
He later learned that Enrique had such a poor hand he simply took the up card, the ace of clubs as a defensive measure. Jack finally drew the fourth queen and promptly discarded the three of clubs as this put him under the safe key if this card ginned Enrique. Much to Jack's surprise, the three of clubs was passed by Enrique and the hand eventually was played to a draw. A new hand was dealt and Enrique picked up a good hand, which he ginned, and won the game. He then went on to win the tournament. What a heartbreaker for Jack!

Partnership Tournament

Another thriller happened in a recent partnership tournament. John McLeod, from Boston, Massachusetts and Joe Bunso from Jacksonville, Florida were involved in a very close game in the final eight of the championship round. John had already knocked his hand and won enough points to bring their score to 299. However, he did not win enough points to give Joe Bunso any kind of safe key.
A win of one point would win the game for the McLeod - Bunso team. An undercut or gin would win it for the opposing team. The knock card was a 10 and Joe immediately knocked with ten points. His opponent slowly laid down his two melds and played off two cards on Joe's meld. He only had two Card remaining and Joe was sure he was undercut. He jumped for joy when his opponent showed a jack and an ace which was just enough to win the game.