8 Gin Rummy Tips

1. Get rid of any high cards that do not match any of your melds to reduce your deadwood count when half of the cards have gone
2.  Pick up cards from the stock pile rather than the discard pile when you can (especially at the beginning). This way your opponents will have a much harder time keeping track of the cards in your hand. Since the cards discarded onto the discard pile are cards your opponents do not need, by picking up cards from the stock pile you may be preventing them from completing melds.
3. Keep a close eye on the cards your opponent draw from the stock pile so you can avoid throwing them cards they need to complete their melds.
4. Consider avoiding picking up card of high value from the discard pile to keep your deadwood score down (unless you can form melds easily).
5. In a multi-round Gin Rummy game catch your opponents off guard by knocking early.
6. In both ring games and tournaments, knock earlier rather than later to avoid the risk of undercut.
7. Go for 4 card sets over runs when building meld, to stop your opponents from laying off their unmatching cards at the end of the round.
8. In ring games, the points are not accumulated after each round is finished, and so go for a gin rather than knock, since this pays more.