Two games, one family

Shanghai vs gin rummy

Both are rummy: you collect cards into sets and runs. After that they part company. Gin rummy is a duel between two people over a single hand. Shanghai seats a whole table — up to eight of you — and marches everybody through the same seven rounds together.

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Your own twelve cards held up toward you in a fan, close enough to read: the ordinary red-and-blue deck, each card carrying an oversized number and suit in its top corner.
Shanghai deals eleven cards in every round. Gin rummy deals ten.

What they share

They are cousins, not the same game

Sets and runs are the vocabulary of every rummy game ever played, and both of these use them. If you have arrived here looking for "gin rummy for the family", Shanghai is almost certainly the game you actually want: gin rummy seats two, and everybody else watches.

A set laid face up on the green felt: the nine of hearts, the nine of clubs and the nine of spades side by side under the table lamp.
A set — three of a number. Both games are built out of these.
A run laid face up on the green felt: the five, six, seven and eight of diamonds in order, all of the same suit.
A run — four or more in one suit in Shanghai, three in gin rummy.

Side by side

Every difference that matters

Gin rummyShanghai
PlayersTwoTwo to eight
LengthHands until someone reaches a targetExactly seven rounds
What you must makeWhatever you like, then knockA named contract that changes every round
RunsThree or moreFour or more
JokersUsually noneYes, wild
Taking a thrown card out of turnNoYes — buying, and it costs you
WinningHighest scoreLowest score

The biggest difference

Shanghai is wild, gin rummy is not

Gin rummy is a tight, quiet, two-handed game of counting. Shanghai has jokers standing in for whatever you are missing, and it lets you buy a card out of somebody else’s discard in the middle of their turn — for a price. That is why a Shanghai table talks the whole time and a gin rummy table does not.

A joker card held at the right-hand end of your fan.
A joker in hand: worth anything you need, and twenty-five points against you if the round ends before you use it.

Why they get muddled

Half of Europe calls both of them "rummy"

Shanghai travels under a great many names — contract rummy, progressive rummy, Liverpool rummy, Shanghai rummy, and in Dutch houses usually just sjanghai. The rules drift a little from kitchen to kitchen; the seven contracts on this site are the common version, and they are written out in full on the rules page.

Two of you, quick and sharp, after dinner: gin rummy. A table full of people of wildly different ages who want to talk while they play: Shanghai. The contracts give everybody the same goal each round, which keeps a beginner in the game far longer.

The Shanghai table seen from above: four other players across the green felt with their names and scores on coloured plates, the face-down pile and the discard pile ringed in gold in the middle, and your own hand of cards fanned out along the bottom.
A Shanghai table: four other people, their scores on their name plates, and your own cards along the bottom.

Settle it at a table

Sit down at a table with whoever is around, or make one of your own and find out which game your family likes.

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