How to Play Rummoli

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Windy and this is how to play Rumoli. Rumoli is a popular game in Canada. They sell special poker boards to play Rumoli which is an eight sided board. In America this game is known as Michigan Rummie or as Tripoley, that's the brand name for it. It is a combination of poker hands and Rummie. You play it like this. The chips are divided evenly amongst the players. There are two to six players. Everyone must have the same number of yellow, red, and blue chips. Yellow is worth one point, red two, and blue three. Every player must place one yellow chip on each of the eight spaces on the Rummie board plus one for the pot. I will explain what these spaces are later. The dealer then deals out all the cards to the players until the deck is out. It doesn't matter if people have different numbers of cards in their hands or not but the dealer deals out one more hand than there are players and this is the unknown hand that is called the widow. After all the cards have been evenly dealt out amongst the players plus the widow the dealer may look at his cards and decide that he wants the widow instead of his cards. He is not allowed to look at the widow but he may discard his hand and take the widow. However, if he likes his hand he may instead auction off the widow to anyone else who would like to exchange their hand for the widow sight unseen. This is done with chips paid to the dealer so someone bids two chips, someone bids three tips and the highest bidder, they get to change their hand for the widow. The discarded hand is discarded from play, removed from play but it is not shown which cards are removed from play, they have to stay hidden. The player from the left of the dealer starts playing. He looks at his hand and must play the lowest valued card that is black. It could be either a spade or a club. He places that low card in the center of the table next to the pot. The person to his left must play the following card and in this case six I have played the six of spades he must play the seven of spades. Now when they're done playing their cards then the player goes to the left and that person must play in the sequence and if he cannot he must place a chip in the kitty starting with yellow. If he has run out of yellow chips for one point he must go to red which are two chips and if he runs out of red he has got to put blue into the kitty so if the player to the left doesn't have a card that follows the sequence of the suit he puts a chip into the kitty and the play goes to the left and follows until that suit is finished. The next person after the finish can start again with red. Once somebody has run out of cards or everyone has had to pass and put a coin into the kitty the game is over. If the game ended by someone running out of their hand then they get to take the points out of the kitty as well as the pot and also one chip from every player for each card that was left in their hand. If they run out of yellow chips they must go to red or if they've run out of red they can go to blue. Once all the chips are collected they are added up one point for yellow, two points for red, and three points for blue. Whoever has the most points wins. In Canada before the Rummie phase of the board is played the cards are actually sorted through by the players and they pick five cards that they think makes the best poker hand. Everyone does a round of digging and playing into the pot until all the players have been forced out or called and then they play and whoever wins the poker hand wins the pot and people ante up again and pick up the cards that they had set aside during the poker round and they play the Rummie round and that's how you play Rumoli."