Description

Kings & Queens Rummy is a variant on contract rummy in which each round consists of two separate hands and players must play certain combinations of sets and runs with each hand while working toward the bigger goal of playing all of one's cards first.

To set up a round, the 216 cards – four decks, plus eight wild cards – are shuffled and each player dealt two separate piles of eleven cards. Players swap piles, then choose one of the two piles they hold to serve as their Queen hand. On a turn, a player draws the top card of the deck or the top three cards on the discard pile, optionally plays sets and runs and plays off opponents, then discards one card. To open, a player must first play a set and run from the Queen hand of 3-7 cards. Once the player does this, she may meld additional cards and play off opponents.

Once a player has run out of cards in the Queen hand, she picks up the other pile – the King hand – and needs to play a set of 3-7 cards from this hand before being able to play off opponents once again. The round ends when a player runs out of cards in her King hand. The other players are penalized based on the value of cards remaining in hand, and the player with the lowest score after five rounds wins.