Rules for the Card Game Pay Me

Pay Me is a type of rummy card game in which you build melds from hands containing an increasing number of dealt cards. The game can be played by two to four players using a standard deck of playing cards including the jokers or up to six players using two decks. The game consists of 11 rounds.

In the first round, each player is dealt three cards. In each successive round, the player to the dealer's left becomes the new dealer and one more card is dealt to each player--four in the second round, five in the third round and so on. After the cards are dealt, the rest of the deck is placed in the middle of the table face-down and becomes the draw pile. The top card of the draw pile is placed face-up next to the draw pile to start the discard pile.

Cards can be melded into sets of at least three cards of the same rank or runs of at least three cards of one suit in sequential order. A player can declare, "Pay me," if his hand melds out before or after discarding. Depending on the number of cards in a player's hand, he may need to assemble a set or run of more than three cards to meld out--in the second round, for instance, the player will need one meld of four or five cards. A single run can contain any number of cards more than three. A set can contain more than four cards when wild cards are used. Wild cards include the Jokers as well as the card rank equal to the number of cards dealt to each player in that round--for example, 3s are wild in the first round and 4s in the second round.

Play starts to the left of the dealer and continues clockwise. On her turn, the player draws one card from the deck or discard pile and then discards one card from her hand. The round continues until one person can declare, "Pay me," by assembling all the cards into her hand into one or more melds.

Once a player declares, "Pay me," the other players are allowed to draw from the deck and discard one last time in succession. They can't draw from the discard pile. Once all players have taken their last turn, everyone lays out their melds. Any cards not part of melds count as points against the players who hold them. Aces through 7s count as five points, and 8s through Kings count as 10. The player with the fewest number of points after 11 rounds wins the game.