Rummy online with friends

The host picks two, three or four

The seat count is a real choice and you make it first, because the hand size follows from it: ten cards each at two, seven each at three or four. Once the table exists the number is set, so nobody arrives to the wrong game.

Those are the only options, and the table supports all three the same way. Many card sites pick the number for you and never mention it. We would rather you enjoy the size you actually wanted, because what it takes to win at three is not what it takes to win at two.

Every empty seat gets its own link, numbered when there is more than one, so you can keep track of which you have sent. Anyone holding a link can take that seat. Send each one to a person directly.

Nobody registers for anything. No app, no download, no password, no tier to pick. Open a page and play, in a phone browser as well as on a laptop. It is free, and you might see an ad now and then which we will try to keep discreet.

Every room has a typed chat, which is what the name you pick is for. A table nobody touches stays open for 48 hours, and this page lists the ones your browser is still sitting at, so a friend whose tab died reopens their own link and sits back down in the same seat.

Melds belong to the table, not to you

Look up the rules of Rummy and half the results hand you Gin Rummy instead. This is the classic one, the base game the rest of the family came off, and here is where the two part company. One deck between everybody. A set is three or four of the same number in different suits. A run is three or more of one suit in order, ace low, so ace two three is a run and queen king ace is not.

Lay either one down and it goes face up in the middle, where it stops being yours. Anybody can add a card to any meld, including one somebody else laid. The shape of the game keeps changing while it is your opponent's turn, and holding a card that fits three different melds is the best problem in the game.

A turn is take one card, either off the deck or off the top of the discard pile, then lay down what you can, then discard. You may not discard the card you just took off the top of that pile. Empty your hand to end the round, and you score whatever the other hands are still holding: an ace is one, a picture card is ten, the rest are worth their number. First to a hundred wins.

Three at a table, which almost nowhere lets you pick

Two-handed Rummy is a duel. Four-handed is a scramble. Three is the one nearly every card site refuses to deal, and in our opinion it is the most fun of them: enough hands for the melds in the middle to grow into something worth stealing, few enough that you can still track what has gone around. Playing a third player in changes what you spend the turn watching.

It costs nothing to find out, because the number is yours. Make a table for three, send two links, deal.

What you will not find here

No accounts, so no ranking, no points carried between matches, no new profile made for you, and no multiplayer lobby dropping a stranger into your game. A browser is the whole requirement. Every game starts because one person opened a table and sent the links out.

The privacy answer is short because we need almost nothing from you. A name for the chat, and that is the lot. There is no good reason for a card table to know more than that.

Nothing follows you between devices. The tables your browser remembers belong to that browser, so one made on a laptop will not appear on a phone. The link is the part that travels.