the rules
The Rules of the Table
Bombay Baazi Rummy is 13-card Indian rummy, played for points at a live table. Nothing house-specific — if you have played rummy anywhere else, you already know this game.
the game
What is 13-card rummy
Rummy is a game of melds. You are dealt 13 cards and you race the rest of the table to arrange every one of them into runs and sets. Four, six or eight seats sit down together, one card is turned up to decide which rank is wild for the hand, and from there it is draw one, discard one, until somebody can show a finished hand.
Skill decides this one, not luck alone — which cards you keep, which you let go, and how early you read that a hand is not worth playing. There is no dealer to beat and no house hand: you are playing the other seats, and the house only shuffles, keeps the clock and takes a stated commission from the winner.
the hand
A hand, start to finish
Every hand runs the same five beats, and the clock runs through all of them — a seat that stops acting is played for, then dropped.
- 1
The deal
Every player gets 13 cards. Tables of four and six are dealt from two decks plus two printed jokers; a table of eight uses three decks, because eight hands would otherwise consume every card and leave nothing to draw from.
- 2
The wild card
One card is turned face up after the deal: its rank is wild for the hand, in all four suits. If that card is itself a printed joker, only the printed jokers are wild.
- 3
Your turn
Draw one card — from the face-down deck or the face-up pile — then discard one. Taking from the pile is public: everyone sees what you picked up.
- 4
The declare
Once all 13 cards are grouped, put your last card face down and show the hand. Get it right and the hand ends there and then, at zero.
- 5
Scored & settled
Everyone else is scored on the cards they could not group, the points become House Tokens at the table's rate, and the seed that shuffled the deck is published so the deal can be replayed.
reading your hand
Sequences & sets
Pure sequence
Three or more consecutive cards of one suit, with no joker standing in. A wild card sitting in its own natural place still counts as pure: with sevens wild, 6♥ 7♥ 8♥ is a pure run.
Impure sequence
The same run, but with a joker filling a gap — 4♣ 5♣ ★ 7♣. It counts as a sequence, just never as the pure one.
Set
Three or four cards of one rank in different suits — 9♥ 9♠ 9♦. Jokers may complete it; the same suit can never appear twice.
- A hand needs at least two sequences, and at least one of them must be pure. Without a pure sequence, nothing else you have arranged counts for anything.
- The ace runs low and high — A-2-3 and Q-K-A — but never round the corner, so K-A-2 is not a sequence.
- The same card twice, from the two decks, can never sit in one group.
- Your hand is always scored under its best possible arrangement, not the one you happened to leave it in.
the scoring
What a card is worth
When someone declares, everyone else scores the cards they could not group. Low is good — the declarer scores zero.
A · K · Q · J · 10
10The ace, the face cards and the ten each carry the maximum.
2 – 9
2–9Every other card is worth exactly the number printed on it.
Joker
0Printed jokers and the hand's wild rank never cost you anything.
| Card | How it counts | Points |
|---|---|---|
| A · K · Q · J · 10 | The ace, the face cards and the ten each carry the maximum. | 10 |
| 2 – 9 | Every other card is worth exactly the number printed on it. | 2–9 |
| Joker | Printed jokers and the hand's wild rank never cost you anything. | 0 |
A losing hand is not capped: whatever it counts up to is what you pay, and that is 130 points if every card in it counts. Hold two sequences with one pure and only your loose cards count; hold a pure sequence but no second sequence and only that run is discounted; hold no pure sequence and every card in your hand counts.
leaving
Drops and wrong declares
You can walk away from a bad hand, and often that is the right move. It just is not free.
Dropped first
20You left the hand before drawing a single card.
Dropped later
40You had already drawn, or you left the table mid-hand.
Declared wrongly
80You showed a hand that does not group — the maximum, and you are out of that hand.
| What you did | When it applies | Costs |
|---|---|---|
| Dropped first | You left the hand before drawing a single card. | 20 |
| Dropped later | You had already drawn, or you left the table mid-hand. | 40 |
| Declared wrongly | You showed a hand that does not group — the maximum, and you are out of that hand. | 80 |
Miss too many turns in a row and the table drops you for you, so one person stepping away cannot freeze everyone else.
the money
What a table costs
Tables are priced per point, in House Tokens. The scoring above is the whole of it — there is nothing else to pay.
Priced per point
Every table has a point value. Your score at the end of a hand, times that value, is what the hand costs you — so a 20-point loss at a 2 HT table is 40 HT.
Set aside before the deal
When a hand is dealt, the most it could possibly cost you at that table's point value is reserved from your balance. You can never lose more than you demonstrably had.
The winner takes the rest
Whoever declares takes the sum of everyone else's points, less the house commission — and that commission is shown on every result rather than folded quietly into the numbers.
Free tables
A free table has a point value of zero. The deal, the clock and the declare are identical; nothing moves in your balance.
trust
Is the deal honest?
Before a card is dealt, the server publishes a hash of the seed it will shuffle with, and every player at the table contributes a seed of their own. When the hand ends the server reveals its seed, so any hand can be replayed in your own browser — confirming the deck was fixed before anyone saw a card, and that nobody changed it afterwards.
play well
A word on responsible play
Rummy is a game of skill, but it is still money on the table. Play only with what you can afford to lose, never to chase a bad session, and set your own limits. If the game stops being fun, take a break.