"It is by no means necessary to go to Harvard to learn to play Gin and in fact a moron is apt to play it better than Einstein."

The Lace-work Kid c.1944 (extract from History of Gin Rummy)

This History of Gin Rummy was written by Mr. David Parlett for gameaccount.com, the world's largest online real-money rummy room. Mr Parlett is a games inventor, historian and consultant and the author of many books on the subject. He specialises in the history of card games and recently published an online article on the history of Poker.

"The principal fad game, in the years 1941-46, of the United States, Gin Rummy (then called simply Gin) was devised in 1909 by Elwood T. Baker of Brooklyn, N. Y., a whist teacher; the name, suggested by Mr. Baker's son, played on the alcoholic affinity of rum and gin; the game was resurgent 1927-30, then dormant until 1940, then adopted by the motion-picture colony and the radio world, who gave it the publicity essential to a fad game. Gin Rummy is a two-hand game and is hardly worth playing, except by addicts, in any other form." (Culbertson's Card Games Complete).

There are many excellent card games for two and a lot of them go back a long way: Pinochle (Bezique) is over 150 years old, Cribbage almost 400 years old, and Piquet more like 500. But Gin Rummy, a relative newcomer in the timescale of history, has gained millions more converts throughout the world since its first appearance, largely owing to the fact that it combines extreme simplicity of form with deceptive complexity of play, and recently because it adapts very easily to computer software and online play.

It's one of those great games that you can learn the rules of in a couple of minutes yet spend a lifetime learning how to play it better. It also has an ingenious scoring system that makes it attractive to gamblers, though, like Poker, it's one of those gambling games where you really have to know what you're doing if you want to come out a winner, in complete contrast to idiot fodder like Faro and Baccarat. The way it encourages you to think you're doing brilliantly one minute then let's you down with a bump the next is what makes it such a maddeningly addictive game.

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