Oklahoma Gin is a skill-based card game and is a close relative and variant of Gin Rummy. Oklahoma Gin is much closer to standard gin rummy than Kalooki is.

Object of the Game

The object of Oklahoma Gin is to create melds and to be the first player to get rid of all the cards in your hand. Points are earned by creating melds.

Melding

A meld is a combination of three or more cards from your hand and there are two kinds of meld combinations: Runs and Sets.
A RUN or a SEQUENCE is three or more cards of the same suit in sequence. Some examples of a Valid Run include; 6, 7, 8; or 2, 3, 4, 5 and some examples of an Invalid Run include; 8, 9, 10, J or 7, 8, 9.
A SET or GROUP or BOOK is three or four cards of the same rank and different suits. Some examples of a Valid Set include; J, J, J; or 3, 3, 3, 3 and some examples of an Invalid Set include; 7, 7, 8 or A, A, 10.
It is important to remember that a single card cannot belong to two sets and/ or to both a set and a run. For example, a player can not have a set of 5, 5, 5 and 3, 4, 5 with the 5 belonging to both melds.

Play Requirements

Oklahoma Gin is normally played with 2 players and used a standard 52-card deck.
The game can also be played with 4 players and as with Gin Rummy, a 2 player game sees 10 cards being dealt to each player and in a 3 or 4 player game, 7 cards are dealt to each player.

Playing

A dealer is randomly chosen to deal the first round and throughout the game, the winner of each round deals the next round.
The deck is shuffled and the dealer deals 10 cards to each player, one at a time face down. The next card is then turned face up in the middle of the table to start the discard pile. This card is very important, because it determines the maximum number of points a player can have remaining in his hand when he knocks. For example, if it is a face card or a 10, a player may knock with 10 points or fewer or if it is a 3, a player may knock with 3 points or fewer. Many players adopt the rule that if the up card is an Ace, then a player may only go out with a gin hand.
In addition, the ‘Spades Double’ rule may be used, in which case if the up card is a spade, then this causes all points in that hand to count as double.

The remaining cards are placed face down next to the discard pile to form a stock pile or a draw pile.
Once the dealer has completed dealing the cards, the players can then look at and sort their cards.
Each normal turn consists of two parts. First, you must draw a card either the top card from the stock pile or the top card from the discard pile. Second, you must discard a card, face up, onto the top of the discard pile.
On the very first turn of each round, the non-dealer decides whether or not to take the first face up card. If that player declines, the dealer may take the card. If one of the players takes this card, that player completes his turn by discarding and then the other player takes a turn. If both players decline to take the card, the non-dealer starts the game by drawing the top card from the draw pile.

Knocking

The round ends when a player ‘knocks’. This may be done on any turn including the first turn after drawing but before discarding. A player may knock when he has the ability to form sets and/ or, discard one card, and have an appropriate number of points remaining in his hand. That is, their deadwood count is equal to the opening card’s face value or lower. For example, if the first up card of the discard pile was a 5, a player may knock with 5 points or fewer.
After knocking and discarding, the player who knocked organizes and spreads all of his cards face up on the table. The player who did not knock does the same. If the knocker did not go gin, the opponent is also allowed to lay off any unmatched cards also referred to as deadwood by adding to the knocker’s sets. For example, you could add a fourth card to a group of three of a kind such as, adding a J, to a set of J, J, J or adding further consecutive cards of the same suit to a sequence, such as, adding 2 or 6 and 7 to a run of 3, 4, 5. The Knock move, therefore, provides the defeated players with an opportunity to reduce their amount of penalty points.
You are never required to knock and you may continue playing in an effort to develop a better hand.

Going Gin

When a player melds all the cards in their hand, laying them down on the table at once and discarding their last card, while having no deadwood or unmatched cards left, this is known as going gin and he/she scores 25 bonus points. Some sources say that the bonus for going gin should be 20 points. Additionally, his/her opponent cannot score any points, even if the opponent also has no unmatched cards.
Some sources say that after players go gin, their opponents may lay their melds down onto the table, to decrease their deadwood count and, therefore, reduce their amount of penalty points.

Scoring

Oklahoma Players who go gin are rewarded with 25 points.
If they did not go gin, then each player calculates the value of their unmatched cards.
If the knocker’s count of unmatched cards is lower, he/she scores 20 points plus the difference between the two counts. If the knocker did not go gin and the values are equal, or if the knocker’s value is greater than his opponent’s, then the knocker has been undercut. In these cases, the knocker’s opponent scores 20 points plus the difference between the values.
An Ace is always low card in Oklahoma Gin and it cannot be used as high card.

The value of each card is as follows:

CARDS	VALUE	EXAMPLE ONE	EXAMPLE TWO
ACES **	1 POINT	A is worth 1 point	A is worth 1 point
FACE CARDS (King, Queen, Jack)	10 POINTS	J is worth 10 points	K is worth 10 points
ALL OTHER CARDS	PIP VALUE/ CARD VALUE	3 is worth 3 points	6 is worth 6 points

Draws

If only two cards remain in the draw pile after a player discards and neither player has knocked, the round ends in a draw. In this case, the same player deals again.

Winning

There are three ways to win a round of Oklahoma Gin which include; going gin, knocking and undercutting. Going gin is the move that rewards the winner with the highest amount of points.
Additional rounds are played until one player’s cumulative score reaches 100 points or more. That player is then the winner.