Rummikub
| Rummikub | |
|---|---|
 Two Rummikub stands with game pieces |
|
| Game data | |
| author | Ephraim Hertzano |
| publishing company | Hertzano (1950), Lemada Light Industries (1978), Intelli (1980, DE), Arxon (1980, DE), Jumbo (1980, DE), Piatnik (AT, HU), Peri Spiele (AT), Carlit (CH) , Ravensburger (CH, IT), Goliath (BE, NL, LU), Pressman Toy (US, CA) Hasbro (vers.), Fun Connection (DE), u. a. |
| Publishing year | 1950 |
| Art | Placement game |
| Teammates | 2 to 4 |
| Duration | 20 - 90 minutes |
| Age | from 7 years
|
| Awards | |
|
• Game of the year 1980 |
|
Rummikub is a game similar to the card game Rummy - especially the variant Räuber-Rummy - only that it is played with number tiles. The game, invented by Ephraim Hertzano in the 1930s, first appeared in Germany in 1980 by Intelli and Arxon and in the same year received the Critics' Prize of the Jury Game of the Year . The game has been sold more than 60 million times in 52 countries and is the third most played family game in the world. The game is the world's best-selling number placement game and the most exported game from Israel.
history
Ephraim Hertzano was a Romanian merchant who made toothbrushes, combs and other plastic accessories, as well as selling other cosmetics. He and his wife Hanna invented the game in the early 1930s. Playing cards were banned in Romania at that time, but Hertzano was able to circumvent the ban by using game pieces with different colored numbers instead of color symbols and picture cards. Due to the difficult financial circumstances, it was not easy for Hertzano to make the game, as both plastic and wood seemed too expensive for it. When an airplane with components made of Perspex (Plexiglas, PMMA ) was dismantled in Romania , he decided to use this material for his game and made his first Rummy game with pieces. After various rounds of games, the game became known and friends and salespeople asked about the game. The rules of the game and colored tokens were improved, and the game was finally called Rummikub in 1950 . In the 1950s, Hertzano emigrated to Israel, where he began to make Rummikub by hand. At first he only sold a few dozen games a year. He regularly invited neighbors, shopkeepers, and vendors to game nights, so demand for the game increased. In 1977, Rummikub was the best-selling game of the year, and the game was marketed internationally. Mariana and Micha Hertzano, the children of Ephraim Hertzano, founded the company Lemada Light Industries in Israel in 1978 , which is still the license holder of Rummikub today. The company is still owned by the Hertzano family today.
Today Rummikub is distributed in Germany by Jumbo , in Switzerland by Ravensburger and in Austria by Piatnik .
Game flow
Goal of the game
The aim of the game is to put down the 14 game pieces that you received at the beginning of the game. Just like in the similar card game rummy, you can only place pieces in certain combinations. The first player to put down all of his pieces is the winner of the round. He receives the value of the sum of the other players' unplaced pieces as plus points.
Another aim of the game is to keep the value of the game pieces that have not been placed as low as possible, since these points are written down as minus points for the respective player after the end of a round.
course
The game is played with one or more sets of game pieces, depending on the number of participants. Each set contains 104 stones with the numbers 1 to 13, which are colored twice in four colors (black, blue, red and yellow), as well as two additional jokers.
Street: 9 10 11 12 Group: 7 7 7
At the beginning all of the game pieces are face down in the middle of the table. Now each player draws a set number of pieces, usually 14. The first player tries, similar to rummy, to "get out" by placing a certain minimum number of pieces, usually 30 points. Either roads, i.e. successive pieces of the same color, or groups, i.e. pieces of the same value of different colors, can be placed. However, there must always be at least three stones together. If you can't put it down, you pick up a stone from the table. The joker can replace any stone without restriction and counts its value. Occasionally the joker is also assigned a fixed value.
- example
Pieces already played: 3 4 5 Own game pieces: 2 5 5 Recombined result: 2 3 4 and 5 5 5
Every player who has "come out" can also get rid of his other stones by placing other stones on the table or by recombining stones on the table. For example, he could take one away from a row of four stones in order to open a new street with two matching stones of his own. Only two conditions have to be met: He may not pick up any stone that has been laid out once, and at the end of each turn there may only be valid streets and rows of at least three stones on the table.
the end of the game
A round ends when a player runs out of stones. The values of all stones that the other players still have are added up and credited to the respective player as negative points and to the winner of the round as positive points. The joker is worth 30 points.
Any number of rounds can be played. The game is ended as the mood takes you or according to a predetermined number of rounds (ideally when all players have started the same number of times). The player with the highest score wins.
World Championship
A Rummikub World Championship has been held every three years since 1991. In the first year there were twelve national masters present. In 2006 participants from 31 nations competed for the Rummikub world championship title. The Japanese Masato Kuwabara won the championship in both 1991 and 2003. The winners came from the Netherlands four times. Since 2011, the rule has been that if several games are played, the total points awarded are added up and then divided by the number of games. This value is taken at the end of the individual partial victories and deducted from the respective final score. The player with the fewest points wins.
| year | place | countries | winner | nation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | Jerusalem , Israel | 12 | Masato Kuwabara |
 Japan
|
| 1994 | Ship on the Rhine (CH, FR, DE, NL) | 20th | Nehad Zahran |
 Egypt
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| 1997 | England , UK | 24 | Peter Mentzij |
 Netherlands
|
| 2000 | Paris , France | 24 | Carla van Perlo |
Netherlands
|
| 2003 | St. Moritz , Switzerland | 26th | Masato Kuwabara |
Japan
|
| 2006 | Maastricht , the Netherlands | 31 | Jacqueline Beekman |
Netherlands
|
| 2009 | Marbella , Spain | 32 | Andréa Papazissis |
 Brazil
|
| 2012 | Taormina , Italy | 32 | Matthijs Delvers |
Netherlands
|
| 2015 | Berlin , Germany | 32 | Kouzo Saito |
Japan
|
variants
There are several variants of this game, including "Rummikub Fortuna" and "Rummicub Reise", as well as a challenging version reminiscent of Scrabble , "Word Rummikub", a letter game based on the crossword puzzle principle , in which words are to be formed using letter tiles, which are then also can be expanded. In 2002, "Original Würfel Rummikub" appeared, a game variant in which the game pieces were replaced by cubes. In 2009, "Rummikub Junior", a simplified version of the classic game for children from 4 years of age, followed, in which the numerical values from 1 to 13 make it easier to assign them and at the same time to learn numbers and strings of numbers thanks to additional symbols printed on the pieces. In 2010, "Rummikub 8 Round Rummy" was released, a new variant of the game in which playing cards are used instead of pieces. The course of the game itself was changed to the extent that instead of discarding pieces, cards based on certain tasks to be fulfilled, such as B. Color combinations or rows of numbers must be collected in hand to win the game. In 2017, "Rummikub Twist" was followed by a new game variant with three new joker pieces, which, in addition to the classic joker, make the basic game more varied in the course of the game using a double joker, a color-changing joker and a mirror joker.
It is similar to the Turkish game called Okey , which has comparable rules, but, contrary to other claims, does not derive from it.
You can also play Rummikub with two normal decks of 52 cards , you only have to remove four jokers. Jack, queen, king and ace replace the values 11, 12, 13 and 1. The game is then also called robber rummy .
Web links
- Website for the game of the license holder Lemada Light Industries (English)
- Rummikub in the Luding games database
- Rummikub in the board game database BoardGameGeek (English)
- Rummikub at the European Game Collectors Guild
- Game instructions at spielregel.de (German, French, Italian; PDF file)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rummikub at Game of the Year
- ↑ a b About Lemada Light Industries Ltd ( Memento of the original dated February 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ a b History Of Rummikub ( Memento of the original from July 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Lemada Light Industries (English)
- ↑ a b Rummikub Online Guide ( memento of the original from July 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ Copyright information on Rummikub game box by Jumbo from 2005
- ↑ World Rummikub Championship ( Memento of the original from July 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Lemada Light Industries
- ↑ Thorsten Pohl: Original dice Rummikub - Jumbo Spiele GmbH -. Retrieved November 5, 2018 .
- ↑ Thorsten Pohl: Rummikub Junior - Jumbo Spiele GmbH -. Retrieved November 5, 2018 .
- ↑ Rummikub 8 Round Rummy. Retrieved November 5, 2018 .
- ↑ Rummikub Twist. Retrieved November 5, 2018 .
