500 Rules — How to Play and Keep Score

Overview

It needs an app more than most rummy games do, because scores go down as well as up. Every hand you both add what you laid down and subtract what you got caught holding, so a bad hand is genuinely negative and the running total has to cope with that.

The game goes by several names — 500 Rum, Rummy 500, 500 Rummy, Pinochle Rummy, Joker Rummy — and it heads a family named after the target score: Rummy 1500, 2500 and 5000 are the same idea played to a bigger number, each with rule tweaks of its own. Persian Rummy is the partnership relative, with four jokers that are melded only with each other.

Setup

A standard 52-card pack plus two jokers. Deal the hands, place the rest face down as the stock and turn its top card face up beside it to start the discard pile. As the hand goes on, keep the discards spread out so every card in the pile can be seen — players are allowed to dig into it, and everyone needs to know what is there.

How many cards are dealt

The Cards dealt each setting follows your table. With five or more players, or if you simply want longer hands, shuffle two packs together.

How to play

On your turn you first take a card, choosing one of three options:

• the top card of the face-down stock;
• the top card of the face-up discard pile;
• the entire discard pile. Most tables require that you immediately meld the card you wanted — the rest come into your hand, useful or not.

You may then lay down any melds you can, and add single cards to melds already on the table, including other players' melds. A meld is three or more cards in sequence in the same suit — 5-6-7 of clubs — or, if sets are switched on, three or more of the same rank.

You end your turn by discarding one card face up.

Cards you have laid down stay on the table in front of you and count for you at the end of the hand. This is why laying down early is safe and hoarding is not.

Taking more than the top card

You may take any card in the discard pile, not only the top one, on two conditions: you take every card lying on top of it as well, and you meld or lay off that deepest card immediately, in the same turn. The rest go into your hand whether you can use them or not. That is the default of the May take the whole discard pile setting; Yes, with no condition drops the meld requirement, and No, top card only limits everyone to the top discard, which removes most of the game's swing.

Scoring

Cards are worth:

Those are the values this page and its worked example use. Pagat and most American rule sheets count 2 through 9 at face value instead of a flat 5 — agree which your table plays; the sheet only records the totals, so either works.

At the end of a hand, each player adds the value of every card they have melded or laid off, and subtracts the value of every card still in their hand.

That subtraction is the point. A player who melded 60 points and is caught with an ace and two kings scores 60 − 35 = 25. A player who melded nothing and holds a joker, an ace and a nine scores 0 − 45 = −45. Negative hand scores are ordinary, and a player's running total can sit below zero for a long stretch of the game.

Going out earns no bonus by default — the reward for going out is that you are caught holding nothing while everyone else is.

Aces: 15 high, 1 low

An ace is worth 15 — the Ace is worth setting — whether it is melded or caught in your hand, which is what makes being stuck with one hurt. The one exception is at tables that allow the ace below the two: with Aces run both ways on, an ace melded low in A-2-3 counts 1 instead.

Jokers

Jokers are wild in a meld and worth the Joker is worth setting — 25 here by default; Pagat and many American rule sheets use 15. Either way a joker counts for you when melded and against you at full value when caught, so a joker in hand at the end of a deal is the most expensive card you can hold. Set Jokers in the deck to zero to play without them.

Ending the game

A hand ends the moment a player gets rid of their last card, playing it as their discard. Everyone else counts what they are left holding.

Deal again and keep a running total. The first player to reach 500 wins. If two players cross 500 in the same hand, the higher total takes it.

Playing to 1500 or 5000

Raise the Play to setting — it runs to 5000 here — and nothing else changes: a hand is scored exactly the same way whether the game ends at 500 or 5000. Rummy 1500 and Rummy 5000, played as games of their own, usually carry rule tweaks beyond the target; this sheet keeps score for them just the same.

Common variations

Playing to 1000 for a longer game; allowing only runs and no sets; forbidding the scoop so only the top discard may be taken; and paying a bonus to whoever goes out. All four are settings rather than separate games.