Bing Rummy is believed to have been invented in the town of Galena in Alaska around 1919 by miners in the town. It is unknown how the game came to be called “Bing rummy,” although the term bing means a pile of rich lead ore which would tie in with the mining activity in the area at the time the game was invented and is representative of the pile of coins that would form in the middle of the table during the game.

A variant of Kalooki, bing can be played between 2 – 8 players but it is best with 3-6 players in the game. The cards are shuffled and passed to the dealer’s right to cut. If the cut card is a two (deuce) the player gets to keep the card. This is an advantage in bing as deuces are wild cards.

Bing Rummy Deck: Composed of 2 decks of 52 Cards

Number of Players: 2 – 8

Card Points: Face cards J, Q, K at 10 points each and the rest of the cards score at their face value.

Number of cards distributed: 14 each, unless a player gets a deuce, then he gets 13 cards as well as the deuce he drew.

Game Objective: To go out with all the other players having 75 points or more.

A player’s turn is consist of one of the following:-
1. Drawing a card from the pile, then discarding.
2. Taking the up-card from the discard pile and then getting rid of a card.
3. Melding.

During melding, a meld is composed of three or more cards in the same rank or a sequence of three or more cards in the same suit. It is also common practice with some rummy card games like bing rummy that a player must at least have three sets before he may play cards on any melds in the table.

The main difference between this game and other rummy variations is in its way of scoring. A player wins when all the other players has 75 points or more while he has less than 75.

For example:

At the start of a hand players A, B, C and D have the following points:-

A – 31

B – 5

C – 19

D – 47

In the next hand, players C goes out with the other players having the following deadwood counts:- A – 58, B – 6, D – 28.

The new totals would be as follows:

A – 31+58 = 89

B – 5+6 = 11

C – 19

D – 47+28 = 75

Players A and D are both 75 points or more and are out of the game, but if bing rummy is being played for money they could both choose to buy back in. They would then resume the game on 19 points in this example, that being the highest score among the remaining players in the game.