How Gin Rummy Scoring Works

Gin Rummy hands move quickly. The part that trips people up is the score, because kitchen tables disagree on the bonuses. This page covers deadwood, a knock that stands, gin, undercut, boxes, and the game bonus the way Solitaire Arcade counts them.

Deal, melds, and the knock rule sit in the How to Play Gin Rummy guide. Once someone has ended the hand, the only question left is which numbers go on the pad.

What deadwood is worth

Only unmatched cards count against you. A card inside a set or a run is worth nothing in the total.

• Ace: 1
• 2 through 9: face value
• 10, jack, queen, king: 10 each
• Any card in a meld: 0

Ace is low in runs as well as in the count. A-2-3 is a meld. Q-K-A is not, so those three all count if they are still unmatched when the hand ends. That is the usual kitchen-table argument after a knock: someone treated the ace as high and then wondered why the scoreboard disagreed.

A knock that stands

You knock with 10 deadwood or less. The opponent melds, then may lay unmatched cards onto your melds. After those layoffs, compare the two counts.

If your deadwood is strictly lower, you score the difference. Knock with 6, leave them on 19, and you score 13. There is no extra bonus for an ordinary knock that stands. The win is just the gap, which is why knocking on 4 or 5 can still be worth it when gin is nowhere close.

Gin

Gin means zero deadwood: every one of the ten cards you keep sits in a meld. The opponent cannot lay off. You score their full deadwood plus 25.

If they are left with 18 unmatched, gin is worth 43. That 25 is the gin bonus on Solitaire Arcade. Some older books use 20. Sitting on 2 or 3 deadwood and wondering whether to wait for that bump is a timing call; Gin Rummy Strategy: When to Knock is the place for that decision, not this sheet.

Undercut

If the opponent's deadwood, after layoffs, is equal to or lower than yours, they undercut you. They score the difference plus 10.

You knock with 8. They lay off two cards and finish on 5. They score (8 − 5) + 10 = 13. A tie after layoffs is also an undercut: difference 0, plus 10.

Your knock count is fixed the moment you go down; theirs can still fall in the layoff window. That is why a thin knock at 9 or 10 feels risky after they have been scooping discards.

A lot of North American pages teach a 25-point undercut. Solitaire Arcade uses 10. If you learned the other figure, the structure is the same; only the bonus changes.

Boxes and the race to 100

Hand points add up toward 100. Gin and undercut points count on the way there. When a player's running total reaches 100 or more, the match ends and the final bonuses are applied.

Each hand won earns a box of 20. Both players can earn boxes across the match. Boxes do not count toward reaching 100; they are added only at the end.

The winner also adds a game bonus of 100. If the loser never scored in the match, that game bonus is 200.

A single-hand game on Solitaire Arcade scores only that hand, with no boxes and no game bonus. Race mode is the longer scoreboard, closer to how scoring works in 500 than to a one-deal shed like Crazy Eights.

A short example across two hands

Say you knock with 4 and they finish on 16. You score 12 for the hand, your running total is 12, and you have one box waiting for the end of the match. Next hand they go gin while you hold 11 deadwood, so they score 11 + 25 = 36. Their total jumps to 36, with a box of their own sitting aside.

Play continues until someone reaches 100 in hand points. Suppose you get there first at 104, they sit on 71, and you won five hands to their three. At the end you add 5 × 20 = 100 in boxes and 100 for the game, finishing at 304. They add 3 × 20 = 60 in boxes and finish at 131. Because they scored during the match, the game bonus stays 100 rather than 200.

Those end bonuses are why a finished match can look huge next to the hand totals you watched pile up. The race was to 100; the boxes and the game bonus land after someone crosses that line.

Variants this game does not use

Oklahoma Gin changes the knock limit from the first upcard and often plays to 150. Hollywood scoring runs three columns at once. Straight Gin forbids knocking until someone goes gin. None of those are this table.

If the mix-up is whether Gin is the same as ordinary Rummy, Gin Rummy vs Rummy draws that line. The family share melds; the knock, the deadwood race, and these bonuses are what make Gin its own game.

Other scoreboards on the site price pressure differently. Shooting the moon in Hearts can flip a whole hand in one swing, and bags in Spades turn small overtricks into a later penalty. Gin keeps the drama in the deadwood gap, the gin bonus, and whether an undercut steals the hand.

Agree the numbers before you deal

Before a kitchen-table game, name three figures out loud: gin bonus, undercut bonus, and box value. On Solitaire Arcade those are 25, 10, and 20, with a target of 100 and a game bonus of 100 or 200. Once those numbers are fixed, the pad stops being an argument and starts being a record of who ended each hand cleaner.

A few scored hands will lock the arithmetic in faster than another pass through the bonuses. Play Gin Rummy against the computer, keep the pad honest for gin, undercut, and boxes, and the interesting part becomes which hand you end and which one you let ride.

How Gin Rummy Scoring Works

Gin Rummy hands move quickly. The part that trips people up is the score, because kitchen tables disagree on the bonuses. This page covers deadwood, a knock that stands, gin, undercut, boxes, and the game bonus the way Solitaire Arcade counts them.

Deal, melds, and the knock rule sit in the How to Play Gin Rummy guide. Once someone has ended the hand, the only question left is which numbers go on the pad.

What deadwood is worth

Only unmatched cards count against you. A card inside a set or a run is worth nothing in the total.

• Ace: 1
• 2 through 9: face value
• 10, jack, queen, king: 10 each
• Any card in a meld: 0

Ace is low in runs as well as in the count. A-2-3 is a meld. Q-K-A is not, so those three all count if they are still unmatched when the hand ends. That is the usual kitchen-table argument after a knock: someone treated the ace as high and then wondered why the scoreboard disagreed.

A knock that stands

You knock with 10 deadwood or less. The opponent melds, then may lay unmatched cards onto your melds. After those layoffs, compare the two counts.

If your deadwood is strictly lower, you score the difference. Knock with 6, leave them on 19, and you score 13. There is no extra bonus for an ordinary knock that stands. The win is just the gap, which is why knocking on 4 or 5 can still be worth it when gin is nowhere close.

Gin

Gin means zero deadwood: every one of the ten cards you keep sits in a meld. The opponent cannot lay off. You score their full deadwood plus 25.

If they are left with 18 unmatched, gin is worth 43. That 25 is the gin bonus on Solitaire Arcade. Some older books use 20. Sitting on 2 or 3 deadwood and wondering whether to wait for that bump is a timing call; Gin Rummy Strategy: When to Knock is the place for that decision, not this sheet.

Undercut

If the opponent's deadwood, after layoffs, is equal to or lower than yours, they undercut you. They score the difference plus 10.

You knock with 8. They lay off two cards and finish on 5. They score (8 − 5) + 10 = 13. A tie after layoffs is also an undercut: difference 0, plus 10.

Your knock count is fixed the moment you go down; theirs can still fall in the layoff window. That is why a thin knock at 9 or 10 feels risky after they have been scooping discards.

A lot of North American pages teach a 25-point undercut. Solitaire Arcade uses 10. If you learned the other figure, the structure is the same; only the bonus changes.

Boxes and the race to 100

Hand points add up toward 100. Gin and undercut points count on the way there. When a player's running total reaches 100 or more, the match ends and the final bonuses are applied.

Each hand won earns a box of 20. Both players can earn boxes across the match. Boxes do not count toward reaching 100; they are added only at the end.

The winner also adds a game bonus of 100. If the loser never scored in the match, that game bonus is 200.

A single-hand game on Solitaire Arcade scores only that hand, with no boxes and no game bonus. Race mode is the longer scoreboard, closer to how scoring works in 500 than to a one-deal shed like Crazy Eights.

A short example across two hands

Say you knock with 4 and they finish on 16. You score 12 for the hand, your running total is 12, and you have one box waiting for the end of the match. Next hand they go gin while you hold 11 deadwood, so they score 11 + 25 = 36. Their total jumps to 36, with a box of their own sitting aside.

Play continues until someone reaches 100 in hand points. Suppose you get there first at 104, they sit on 71, and you won five hands to their three. At the end you add 5 × 20 = 100 in boxes and 100 for the game, finishing at 304. They add 3 × 20 = 60 in boxes and finish at 131. Because they scored during the match, the game bonus stays 100 rather than 200.

Those end bonuses are why a finished match can look huge next to the hand totals you watched pile up. The race was to 100; the boxes and the game bonus land after someone crosses that line.

Variants this game does not use

Oklahoma Gin changes the knock limit from the first upcard and often plays to 150. Hollywood scoring runs three columns at once. Straight Gin forbids knocking until someone goes gin. None of those are this table.

If the mix-up is whether Gin is the same as ordinary Rummy, Gin Rummy vs Rummy draws that line. The family share melds; the knock, the deadwood race, and these bonuses are what make Gin its own game.

Other scoreboards on the site price pressure differently. Shooting the moon in Hearts can flip a whole hand in one swing, and bags in Spades turn small overtricks into a later penalty. Gin keeps the drama in the deadwood gap, the gin bonus, and whether an undercut steals the hand.

Agree the numbers before you deal

Before a kitchen-table game, name three figures out loud: gin bonus, undercut bonus, and box value. On Solitaire Arcade those are 25, 10, and 20, with a target of 100 and a game bonus of 100 or 200. Once those numbers are fixed, the pad stops being an argument and starts being a record of who ended each hand cleaner.

A few scored hands will lock the arithmetic in faster than another pass through the bonuses. Play Gin Rummy against the computer, keep the pad honest for gin, undercut, and boxes, and the interesting part becomes which hand you end and which one you let ride.