Posted on December 4, 2007 10:56 AM by chadley
When I was a kid, my family regularly got together to play a card game that we called "Shanghai" We would set up 2-3 tables in a family member's house, and play until every team of players had played every other team. I don't remember if we determined an overall winner. Everyone would bring food and the kids who were too young to play cards would find an area of the house to play children's games. The monthly card game is one of the more pleasant memories I have of my childhood.I came to learn much later that the official name is Shanghai Rum or Contract Rummy, according to Wikipedia. If you want a full explanation of the game, please visit the Wikipedia site, as they've explained it there far better than I could hope to. I will say that the game my family played was the same game with a few small variations.
The first variation that I notice pertains to the buying of cards. In our version, if two or more people want to buy a card from the discard pile, the person who is closest to the dealer for the hand gets the card. On Wikipedia, the person who is sitting closest to the current player gets the card. That sounds like it may be more fair, since by the end of the game the ability to buy cards becomes very important and the player/team that deals the last hand has a significant advantage if the dealer always wins the buy.
Some other rules that I don't remember ever using in our game are:
A limit on the number of wild cards you can use in a meld
Taking two cards if you can't discard
4 buys in the 10th hand (We allow 5 buys)
The basic setup for our game:
4 people = 2 decks of cards with jokers
Deal is normal, left to right, eleven cards.
Buying:
3 buys for hands 1-9
5 buys for hand 10
Scoring for our version:
3-7 5 points
8-K 10 points
Aces 20 points
Wild Cards (2's and Jokers) 50 points
Hands for our version:
1 2 sets of 3
2 1 set of 3 and 1 run of 4
3 2 sets of 4
4 1 set of 3 and 1 run of 5
5 3 sets of 3
6 1 set of 3 and 1 run of 7
7 3 runs of 4
8 1 set of 3 and 1 run of 10
9 3 sets of 3 and 1 run of 5
10 3 runs of 5
Aces can be played high or low, but not both.
A-K-Q-J YES
A-2-3-4 YES
3-2-A-K NO
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Tags: Contract Rummy, Shanghai, Shanghai Rum, cards, games
