Printable Gin Rummy Score Sheet

Gin Rummy scoring hinges on a single number most players track in their head and get wrong under pressure: deadwood, the point value of a player's unmatched cards. Everything else on a Gin sheet — who knocked, whether it backfired, and how big the resulting bonus is — is really just a set of rules for what happens to that one number once a hand ends.

Deadwood, and the 10-point knock limit

A player may "knock" (end the hand) only once their own deadwood — cards not part of a set or run — totals 10 points or less (aces count 1, number cards their face value, face cards 10 each). The knocking player then lays off unmatched cards against their opponent's melds if possible, and the hand is scored as the difference between the two players' final deadwood totals, awarded to the knocker.

Gin: deadwood at zero, no lay-offs allowed

If a player's deadwood reaches exactly zero — every card is part of a meld — they can declare "gin" instead of an ordinary knock. Gin scores the opponent's entire deadwood total as usual, but adds a flat 25-point bonus on top, and critically, the opponent isn't allowed to lay off any cards against a gin hand the way they could against an ordinary knock. This makes gin worth noticeably more than a knock with the same opponent deadwood, which is why the sheet needs a distinct mark for gin hands rather than folding the bonus into a generic knock score.

The undercut: when knocking backfires

If the knocking player's deadwood turns out to be equal to or higher than their opponent's after lay-offs, the opponent has "undercut" them — the opponent scores the deadwood difference plus a 25-point bonus, and the right to have knocked at all effectively flips against the original knocker. An undercut is the single result most likely to get mis-scored on a casual sheet, since it looks similar to a normal hand but the bonus and the direction of points both reverse.

Reading a hand's result off the sheet

Each hand row should record: who knocked (or declared gin), both players' final deadwood totals, and which of the three outcomes applied — ordinary knock, gin, or undercut — since that determines both who scores and whether a bonus applies. The running total per player sits in its own column, and the first to reach an agreed target (100 is standard) wins the game.

Box bonuses and game-ending bonuses, if the table uses them

Many groups add a flat bonus per hand won (a "box" or "line" bonus, commonly 25 points) on top of the deadwood-based score, plus a bonus for winning the overall game and an extra "shutout" bonus if the loser never won a single hand. None of these are part of the base scoring above — they're worth noting explicitly at the top of a session's sheet if the table is using them, since they change the final total significantly.

Drawing, discarding, and the initial deal are covered on the full Gin Rummy rules page; deadwood math is worked through separately on the scoring deep-dive. A questionable lay-off is the most common thing two players disagree on mid-hand, and the dispute page sets out how it's normally resolved.

Can a player lay off cards against a gin hand the way they can against a normal knock? No — laying off unmatched cards onto the knocker's melds is only allowed when the knocker ends the hand with a non-zero deadwood (an ordinary knock). A gin hand (zero deadwood) blocks lay-offs entirely, which is part of why gin is worth the extra 25-point bonus.

Does an undercut end the game or just that hand? Just that hand — an undercut changes who scores points for that specific hand (and by how much), but play continues normally to the next deal, with both players' running totals carrying forward as usual toward the target score.

Gin Rummy is one of several rummy-family games on this site's Card Games category hub.