Three Thirteen
This Rummy game is similar to the Five Crowns game available for purchase. Five Crowns uses a custom deck with five suits, Three Thirteen uses a standard deck but otherwise is very similar. The game starts with only three cards dealt to each player, and each successive round gets one more card.
Setup
Players: Two or more players.
Cards: One standard 52-card deck for two players. Two decks for three or four people. The key is that there be enough cards for all to play, so additional decks can be added for larger groups as needed.
Aces always rank low in this game, (as if they had a "1" on the card.)
The Deal: This game has eleven rounds. The first dealer is chosen at random and the turn to deal passes to the left after each round. In the first round three cards are dealt to each player, in the second round four cards are dealt and so on until the eleventh and last round in which thirteen cards each are dealt. The remainder of the cards are placed face down on the table to form a stock pile. The top card of the stock is being flipped face up and put beside the stock pile to start the discard pile.
Objective: The object of the game is to form all the cards in your hand into Sets or Runs. Melding (laying sets or runs onto the table) is not done until the end of each round of the game. There is no laying off of cards onto other melds at any time.
Wild cards
As mentioned, this game has 11 rounds. The number of cards dealt changes for each round, as does the wild card for that round. The wild card is equal to the number of cards dealt for that hand.
| Round | Cards Dealt | Wild card |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | Threes |
| 2 | 4 | Fours |
| 3 | 5 | Fives |
| 4 | 6 | Sixes |
| 5 | 7 | Sevens |
| 6 | 8 | Eights |
| 7 | 9 | Nines |
| 8 | 10 | Tens |
| 9 | 11 | Jacks |
| 10 | 12 | Queens |
| 11 | 13 | Kings |
Game Play
Play commences with the player to the left of the dealer taking a turn and continues clockwise until the hand ends.
Players do the following actions when it is their turn:
- Draw: A card must be drawn either from the stock pile or the discard pile and added to the player’s current hand.
- Discard: The player ends his or her turn by discarding one card face up to the discard pile. Once the discard is done then the turn is over and the player cannot do anything else until their next turn.
End of Hand
A player can go out when it is their turn to play. He or she must draw a card, and if they are then able to form all of their cards, except one, into Sets or Runs then they can lay down their melds and discard their final card. Each of the other players is allowed one more turn. When the turn comes back to the player who went out then the round is over and the scores are calculated.
Scoring
At the end of the round each player forms their cards into sets and runs. Any cards left that are not in a set or run (i.e. their deadwood) are added up based on the following values, and this becomes penalty points for that player. Players are not allowed to lay off their deadwood on any of the other melds that have been formed. Cards have these point values:
| Card | Value |
|---|---|
| Ace | 1 |
| Face cards | 10 |
| Others | Face value |
The scores are accumulated from round to round, and whoever has the lowest score at the end of the eleventh round is the winner.
Optional Rules and Variations
The following rules may be added to the standard game if all players agree to the variation before the first player takes their turn. It’s not an all or nothing deal, the game participants can pick and choose which variations they like.
- Aces high or low: Some play that Aces can be used as high or low - so Q-K-A is a valid sequence. In this case an Ace remaining in your hand at the end costs 15 points, rather than one point.
- Face card points: Some groups score 11 points for Jacks, 12 for Queens and 13 for Kings.
- Jokers: Some groups include Jokers as additional wild cards. In that case, a joker left in your hand at the end of a round scores 20 penalty points.