Continental Rummy House Rules

1

The pack

Two standard decks, always, whatever the player count.
Jokers number one more than the players who start the game. Six players, seven jokers.
That count is fixed for the whole game. Players busting out does not remove jokers — six starters who dwindle to three are still playing with seven.
Jokers are wild.

Pack composition
Players at the start	Jokers	Cards in pack	Dealt	Left after dealing
2	3	107	20	87
3	4	108	30	78
4	5	109	40	69
5	6	110	50	60
6	7	111	60	51

2

Deal and turn

Ten cards to each player. The next card starts the discard pile; the rest is the stock.
On your turn you draw exactly one card — either the top of the stock or the top of the discard pile. You may not dig deeper into the pile.
You then discard one card, face up, ending your turn.
You do not draw on the turn you knock. See 4.
If the stock runs out before anyone ends the hand, reshuffle the discard pile into a fresh stock and carry on.

Nothing is ever laid down mid-hand. Melds stay hidden until someone ends the hand. There are no melds on the table, so there is nothing to lay off onto — the “no laying off” rule is a consequence of the structure, not a restriction on top of it.

The discard pile is the only public information in the game.

3

Melds

Sets — three or more cards of the same rank.
Runs — three or more consecutive cards in the same suit.
Aces play high (Q–K–A) or low (A–2–3), but runs do not wrap: K–A–2 is not a run.
Jokers are wild and may stand for any card in any meld, with no limit per meld — 9♣ joker joker is a legal set.
Duplicates are fine. Two decks means two of every card, and 7♠ 7♠ 7♥ is a legal set.
Sets have no size ceiling. Five or six of a rank is legal if you can assemble it.

4

Ending the hand

Four ways, each declared on your own turn. A knock and a close are alternatives — you cannot do both.

The four endings
Ending	What it takes	Scores	Match
Knock	Nine melded, a 2 or 3 in hand	+2 or +3	continues
Close	All ten melded, discard the draw	−10	continues
Continental	Ten of one suit	−35	continues
Straight flush	Ten of one suit, in sequence	−35	ends

A knock is declared before drawing. You do not draw and do not discard; the 2 or 3 still in your hand counts against you as normal.
A close means melding all ten and discarding the card you drew. It is worth ten points off your total.
A continental is ten cards of one suit, jokers standing for any suit. No melds required. It is worth thirty-five points off your total, and play carries on.
A straight flush continental — those ten cards in sequence — wins the match outright.

Everyone else then reveals. Cards forming valid melds in your own hand cost nothing; everything left over is counted against you.

5

Counting

Card values
Card	Points
Ace	15
Ace, held by a player sitting on exactly 99	1
Joker, held at the count	any value you declare
King, Queen, Jack, Ten	10
Nine down to Two Assumed	pip value

An ace is 15 at all times except for a player whose running total is exactly 99, where it counts 1. Ninety-eight or a hundred gets no relief — only 99.
Jokers are wild in melds (see 3.4), and stay wild at the count. A joker you decline to meld is declared as any card you like — any suit, any value — and scores that card. A held joker is worth whatever you choose to call it.
That makes a held joker a dial rather than a cost. Declare it high to steer your total into the 90–100 window and set up a buy back, or low to keep the damage down. In practice a joker is melded almost every time — this is the rare exception, not the plan.
Totals may go below zero. Closes and continentals are worth points off, and there is no floor.

Two rules quietly reward sitting on 99. An ace drops from 15 to 1 there, and a held joker can be declared at whatever value lands you there. A player one point from the window has more control over their fate than the raw numbers suggest.

6

The match

Scores accumulate hand to hand. Low is good. Each player brings their own cash and plays off that stack. Before a game starts the table agrees an ante — usually $10, $20, $50 or $100 — and everybody pays it into the middle, so the pot opens with money in it rather than empty. A $20 ante three-handed starts the pot at $60. The ante is also the price of a first buy back, and the basis for every other price.

A player whose total reaches 101 or more is eliminated immediately, with no recourse.
A player whose total lands in the window 90–100 may buy back in.
Buying sets your score to the second-lowest score still in the game — not the lowest. Heads-up there is only one other score, so that one stands.
The window can be re-entered. Every buy costs double the last one, and the ladder is per player — someone buying for the first time always pays the ante, however many times anyone else has bought.
When more than one player is in the window at once, they declare in rotation starting to the dealer’s left.
The pot in the middle starts at the antes, and is fed further by rebuy money and by one share of every hand (see 7). It goes to whoever wins the match, or is split evenly under 6.7.
Once only two players remain, if their totals are ever within 10 points of each other after a hand, the pot is split evenly and the match ends. This is mandatory, not an offer.

The rebuy ladder — per player, at a $10 ante
Their buy	Cost
First	1× — $10
Second	2× — $20
Third	4× — $40
Fourth	8× — $80

The window is worth aiming for. Because 101 eliminates outright and only 90–100 offers a buy, a player near the line is far better off taking a small controlled loss than a large one. At 87 points a hand costing 8 is a lifeline; one costing 20 is the end of your game.

Rule 5.3 turns that from a hope into a tactic: a held joker can be declared at exactly the value that puts you in the window.

7

Money at the table

What each ending pays

Every player still in pays one share when a hand ends. One of those shares goes to the pot rather than to the winner — so the winner takes one share fewer than there are payers. Heads-up is the exception: with a single payer there is nothing to divert, and the winner takes the lot. Every price is a fraction of the ante, so raising the ante raises all of them together.

Where a hand’s money goes — a $5 knock
Players still in	Payers	Collected	To the winner	To the pot
6	5	$25	$20	$5
5	4	$20	$15	$5
4	3	$15	$10	$5
3	2	$10	$5	$5
2	1	$5	nothing	$5

Heads-up, the pot takes nothing. With one payer left there is no share to divert, so the whole of what the loser pays goes to the winner. The pot stops growing at that point — it only holds what earlier hands and the antes put there, and rule 6.7 will usually split it.

So the last stretch is played for two things at once: the hands, which now pay in full, and the pot, which is whatever the table has already put in.

Prices as shares of the ante — the lowest ante is $10, so no price is ever change
Ending	Share	$10 ante	$50 ante	$100 ante
Knock	10%	$1	$5	$10
Close	20%	$2	$10	$20
Continental	50%	$5	$25	$50
Straight flush	50%	$5	$25	$50
Per joker	20%	$2	$10	$20

The joker bounty

A player who had three or more jokers when the hand ended is paid for every one of them — whether they were melded or not. Playing them into melds does not forfeit the bounty.
The rate is 20% of the ante per joker, and every other player still in pays it. Three jokers at a $50 ante, four-handed, collects $90.
Two jokers pays nothing. The threshold is three.

The feeding penalty

A feeder covers the whole collection, the pot’s share included. The winner still takes the same amount.
A player who feeds the next seat three helpful cards in a row — including a duplicate they should have known was useful — pays the whole table’s fees for that hand.
The feeder’s payment replaces what the other losers owe. The winner collects their usual total; it simply all comes from one pocket. The other losers pay nothing.

This is the one rule with no objective test. “Should have known was helpful” is a judgement, and the table has to make it. Agree in advance who rules on it — the dealer, or a vote — because arguing about it after the money moves is how a game ends early.

8

Notes on play

The discard pile is the whole information game

Nothing is ever laid down, so no one sees a single meld until the hand ends. Everything you know about the other hands you learned from what people threw away and what they picked up. Playing attentively here means tracking discards, because there is nothing else to track.

Closing is worth more than winning the hand

A close swings you ten points the right way and costs everyone else their leftovers. Over a long game the closer’s edge compounds — and a continental at thirty-five points off is worth chasing even though it no longer ends anything.

Jokers rarely cost you anything

A joker you hold scores whatever you declare it — and in practice it is almost always melded instead. One or two get absorbed into melds already on the table; three declared alike is a set in its own right, so it goes down and scores nothing at all. That costs you nothing on the bounty, which counts jokers you had rather than jokers you were stuck with (7.1). The dial in 5.3 matters only on the rare occasion you actually want the points.

Near the line, cheap beats good

At 87 points the goal is no longer to win the hand — it is to keep the hand small enough to land in the buy window instead of past it. A knock holding a 2 costs you two points and keeps you alive. Playing on for a close risks twenty and ends your match.

Heads-up, the gap is the whole game

Once two remain, closing to within ten points forces an even split. The player who is behind wants that split; the player ahead has to keep the gap open, which means declining safe cheap hands they would otherwise take.