Gin Rummy Online Club

Rummy At The Famous Club

Much to the delight and profit of the sundry playing card manufacturers, gin rummy is a great game for deck changers. One evening at the Friars Club, while a superstitious player was changing decks for the fifth time within an hour, his opponent asked him, “Wouldn’t you like to go back to the first deck?”

The Friars Club

The Friars Club has the loser dealing. They feel it’s a precaution against possible cheating. Then, they reason, it is impossible for a loser to complain that his opponent is doing any tricky maneuvering of the cards. This same rule prevails in the Las Vegas Gin Rummy Online Tournament and in many clubs throughout the country, usually for the same reason. It can be a safeguard of sorts, but if a player is really bent on cheating, the methods he can use are so multiple and so varied that there is no absolute protection against it. Even if he is the non-dealer, generally no one will object if he gives the cards an extra shuffle or two before he cuts them. In fact the Las Vegas Tournament extends the non-dealer the right to a final shuffle, and most rules permit it. Just as the intentional cheater has many opportunities to practice his guile, the honest player who is on the lookout has many ways to protect him- self. My own feelings about this are very definite:
If I suspect there is any cheating going on, this is a game I don’t wish to be in; this is a player I will avoid. I know that if I continue to play him things are likely to get very touchy before the end of the evening. This is decidedly not my idea of a pleasant round of gin rummy, whether money is involved or not.

Famous Players

One of the foremost players at the Friars Club was Ely Glassman, a businessman who at one time won the championship of the Beverly Club. A member of the Friars Club rules committee, he explained the attitude of the club toward anyone suspect.
“If we find a player not conducting himself in a legitimate manner, we cut him out immediately. We just refuse to play with him. If he’s unable to get into a game he can’t cheat. Ostracism is the best policy. None of us are trying to make living playing cards.”
This has rarely happened at the Friars.
It has often been said that a millionaire will cheat you quicker than a bum in Gin game. The accepted explanation is that a millionaire, due to his accumulation of wealth and various successes, has a greater ego urge than a bum to be top dog.

Cheating In Rummy

The most common form of cheating in gin is the way your opponent lays his cards down after you knock or go gin. He may say, “Thirty-nine,” and slide them face down into the pile, and for all you know he might have had seventy-nine.
Glassman played one of these card sliders at another club. He won handily, although he always had to take his opponent’s word for the count.
“Why did you let him continually cheat you?” a perturbed friend, who witnessed the game, asked.
“Oh, well,” Glassman said, indifferently, “I was getting a fairly good count and I was beating this fellow pretty regularly. Maybe I wasn’t winning as much as I was entitled to, but if I made an issue of it I’d lose an opponent I could handle even if he did cheat.”
Aside from the question of avoiding possible cheating situations, there are two schools of thought about who has the slight edge at the start of a hand: the dealer, or the person on the receiving end of the deal. My own feeling is that the receiver has the odds in his favor because he has first choice of picking up the knock card.