Well, every poker enthusiast at some point learns about Stu Ungar and his being unbeatable in a game of gin rummy.
Unfortunately, the game seems much less popular (dead?) nowadays to find action and experience a skilled game for yourself at your convenience.
I hope this thread would gather poker players who are also interested in learning and playing this game.

The following is my experience exploring the wonderful game of Gin Rummy:

Books

• "How To Win At Gin Rummy: Playing for Fun and Profit" by Pramod Shankar
• "Cohen's complete book of gin rummy" by Leo E Cohen

Apps (Gin Rummy Plus by Zynga on Android & iOS)

• The competition is soft even in high-rollers room
• I started with 5K coins and now at 180M (over 20,000x growth)
• The leaders have Billions of coins
• Unfortunately, no Oklahoma gin.

Strategy

• Multi-level thinking (hand reading, representation, misinformation)
• Offensive and defensive strategies
• Purely exploitative play (don't know what GTO would like for this game)
  + Find your opponent's tendencies and capitalize on them
• Heavy reliance on memory (Have to remember 10 to 30 cards in order)
• Gambling is punished quite fast (skill shows up quicker in results)
• Mistakes are punished quite fast (unlike poker, more like chess)
• Lower variance than poker (10-20 buy-in bankroll is often enough for 100 point games)
• You know when you are being outplayed (unlike poker, more like chess)
  + Have to hustle to keep the fish playing (manufacturing near-miss games)
  + Learn to appreciate the high variance in poker that keeps the fish fooled
• Patience and discipline are paramount (like in chess)
• Playing for a draw (to the wall) is an important strategy (like in chess)

The game or variation of it seems to be hot in India (real money online games, live championships).

There have been a few threads on this topic here over the years, but they go nowhere fast. It is simply too hard to find reliable games in the US AFAIK.

IME the best places to find regular games is at golf clubs. As you stated, it is very easy to determine who you can beat and who you can't. As a result, most of the games I have found have been partnership games (2 vs 2, 3 vs 3, etc) in order to balance out the skill factor. Partnership games demand strategies of their own. They are also much more fun IME, and they keep the poorer players around longer as they win far more often than they do heads-up.

I love gin--if you have opponents with just enough skill to keep playing for extended periods. It can be a very social game. IMO it is the most fun card game going--with the right opponents (and partners in partnership games).

Good luck with the thread and with finding regular games!

Found games at https://www.gamecolony.com/

It seems to support several variations and game points. The most important difference from other gin rummy apps is that it uses ELO rating like for chess.

Even though the UI looks ancient, it has very interesting/useful layout for the cards. I haven't yet extensively played there, but it claims to have tournaments for real cash prizes. This platform looks very promising.

Damn. Turns out they have the same restrictions as some US poker sites. In some states (like WA), they don't allow online gambling for sweeps or prizes. Can't purchase any gin-rummy tourney tickets.

Why play gin online where it is possible for everyone to have perfect information? Makes no sense at all.

How would they have perfect information? You could say the same thing about poker.

Or do you just mean perfect information of the discards? Isn't that something most good players should have live too without cheating?

Anybody thinks that learning Gin Rummy will help to become a better poker player ( improve analytical skills, memory ). Are online games worth playing?

Correct. And analyzing that information is what separates players.

IME in live games:
bad players do not always remember which discards the opponent picks up.

average players usually remember that but often have deficits in (a) ascertaining how the opponent is using those cards, (b) ascertaining what the opponent is likely to hold from the opponent's discards--and the order he makes them, and (c) figuring out the optimal discard of his own 11 current cards with that knowledge.

good players do all of that reliably and repeatedly.

Better than good players do more.

In a live game a good player can figure out in an hour or less whether he is better than his opponent.

I never say never, but I would never play online gin for money. I have rarely passed up an opportunity to play a live gin game.

I find Gin Rummy more cognitively demanding than poker. Analytically, it is more like chess with imperfect information. With tricky, tough, and aggressive opponents, multi-level thinking gets deep, so defensive play and playing for a draw are the most challenging.

Another interesting aspect is that you have to adjust your game depending on the current score since it dictates the likelihood of your winning/losing the whole game. This is somewhat similar to playing differently due to stack sizes in a poker tournament.

Finally, unlike poker, this game requires a good memory of cards. Since playing Gin Rummy, I only need to look at my poker hole cards once and remember the rank, suits, and order for the rest of the hand. I never take a second look my hole cards anymore.

Anecdotal similarities/aspects

Since, in gin rummy, you can more easily tell if you are getting outplayed (you get fooled to play how your opponent wants you to play), it can easily get frustrating, and revenge tilt may ensue. It is like getting bluffed in poker. You have to able to deal with that.

Another tilting experience is when an aggressive player chooses high variance lines (similar to playing with a maniac in poker), and you end up dealing with large swings (though not as large as in no-limit poker).

hi all,

i'm curious to know what happened to gin rummy after stu left the game in the 80s. did it just fizzle out slowly? or did it just really crumble pretty quickly when NLHE started to take hold?

Gin rummy live tourneys in Vegas: http://ginrummytournaments.com/

Which count-back method is used to determine a winner in a three player match where two are left with an identical score?

Is it number of individual games won or is a tie-breaker played?