How to Play Tong-its Rummy?

Christo Thomas | July 7th, 2014 | How To Play Rummy

If you have been to Philippines, you might have heard about Tong-its especially if you love playing card games. Tong-its rummy is a simple and fun filled variant of rummy popular in Luzon, an island in Philippines. This variant of rummy has close similarities in gameplay and rules with that of Tonk rummy.

Tong-its Rummy Rules and Gameplay

Tong-its rummy can accommodate a maximum of 3 players at a time. The game uses the normal standard deck of 52 cards. The aim of the game is to make melds and get rid of all the cards in hand or get minimum points when the central stack empties up.

Even tong-its rummy have many variants with different sets of rules and gameplay. But the basic rule of declaring the game is same for every variant. The rule and gameplay for basic version of tong-its rummy is as given below:

Each player playing Tong-its is dealt with 12 cards each. The dealer will have 13 cards. The rest of the cards are placed as central stack. A card from the central stack is placed faced down to form a discard section. The game begins when a player picks a card from the central stack or the discard pile. The process of discarding and picking of cards continues until one player makes his melds or the central stack gets empty.

The scoring in Tong-its is as same as other rummy variants. The Ace card carries a point of 1 where as J,Q and K carries a point of 10. The number cards takes the value printed on them i.e. 4 of diamonds carries 4 points, 8 of hearts carries 8 points.

The winner of Tong-its is a player who have least points when the central stack become empty or when a player declares with legal melds also known as Bahay of sets or sequences.

To know more about other exciting variations of rummy, visit our How to Play category. If you have any feedbacks or comments on the article, let us know via the comment section below.