Customer Reviews

Gin Rummy: How to Play and How to Win

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

NO MATTER HOW GREAT OR POOR A PLAYER YOU ARE YOU WILL LEARN FROM THIS WORK. YOU ARE BOUND TO RECOGNIZE MANY OF HIS CHARACTERS. BEST GIN RUMMY BOOK TO DATE. By: Doctorgin@AOL.com

I need to start by saying I am at best a beginning player. However, the game I was taught by 3 different people as gin rummy is somewhat different than the game described in this book and not a variation listed in the back. Therefore, I have evaluated this book from the eyes of someone who has not really played "classic gin rummy".

I thought the book deserved more than 3 stars as "ok" but hated to say I really "liked" it. I found the author interesting in his anecdotal style but found it hard to learn from as a beginner. I would have appreciated a bit more discussion at the beginning about the basics of the game and the two ways to win a game and more examples of scoring. He gives lots of examples elsewhere and it would have made a couple things clearer for me since my questions were not answered in the basic text.

I got the book to learn a bit of strategy to beat my card playing brother-in-law. Since I was taught to play with fewer cards and often with more than one person but not with a partner, the playing strategies were not as applicable for the game we play but I did learn a bit. I am sure with more play I will come to understand some of the concepts better.

What I will say for the book is that it made me want to learn the classic game of gin rummy. I had not realized it was even played for money or that there are tournaments in places like Las Vegas or Reno. I thought it was the stuff of movies, southern gentlemen in white suits with mustaches and country clubs. I think that after I play the classic game I will come to realize the value of this book and find that it definitely qualifies for that 4th star.

This book is almost totally useless in teaching gin rummy to a relatively new player. It utilizes primarily an anecdotal approach using exclusively examples from games in which the author has played. While this may be interesting to the author's friends and competitors, it is of little or no interest to a member of the general public. Do not waste your time with this book unless you know the author.

It doesn't matter how good at something someone is, if they don't write well a book by them will be substandard. This is the case here. The book is rambling and incoherant, and by the end i was more confused than enlightened regarding Gin strategy. It's written more like a biography than a book on game strategy and it's not a particularly interesting biography anyway. Don't buy this book. Get Sam Fry's instead: it is less than half the size but teaches you more than twice as much about Gin Rummy!

The author provides good tips for partnership gin. However, his analysis of regular gin is best suited for beginners only. There are better books for singles players.

I would like to disagree with the reviewer who said "poor author and teacher." Fraed doesn't give simple formulas or easy answers. That's good, because gin rummy is not that simple! But the answers are there, hiding in Fraed's examples and discussion. You have to work at gin over the table, and you should expect to work at reading a text on it.

I think I found one little mistake on page 92, but that's nitpicking. ;)

People interested in this book should also read the review by ckill2015 of Gin Rummy at its best -- which is basically the same book. C Killebrew had one of the most incredible records of all time playing gin on the internet and in real life.