Learning Card Games: Tunk

Last year we started a new tradition and learned how to play Pitch the week after Christmas. This year we chose Tunk (also called Tonk in some places).

Why Tunk? We initially thought we’d try Euchre or Cinch, but both of those needed four players for partner pairs and Amanda was engrossed in a good book, so we needed something that three people could play. My Dad mentioned that Northeast Ohio Ford workers used to play Tonk, so we looked it up in Hoyle (called Tunk there) and found it could accommodate 3-7 players, so we gave it a shot.

Tunk is a variation of Gin Rummy. The classic version uses 7 cards, but a faster version with more people can use 5 cards. There are a lot of variations we found online with slightly different rules, so we followed the rules in our Hoyle rulebook.

Cards: 52, Aces are low and count as 1, King is high, and Deuces (2) are wild.

Deal: Each player is dealt 7 cards. Remaining cards go to the stockpile in the middle of the table and the top is flipped to start the discard pile.

Play: Clockwise from dealer. Each player takes a card from the top of the stockpile or discard, then discards one from their hand. The goal is to create sets of 3-4, as in Gin Rummy (same card of different suits 3 3 3 or sequence of the same suit 3 4 5 ). A matched set may have no more than four cards and must include two non-wild cards. When a player has deadwood (cards not in a set) that total less than 5 (Counting: Face cards count as 10, deuces not in a set count as 25, all other cards are the number value), they can Tunk (knock). The player who Tunks then lays out their sets and separates the deadwood. All other players then have one turn to lay off their unmatched cards on the Tunker’s sets if they can. If the Tunker’s hand has no deadwood, there is no lay off round.

If a player gets 50 points at the first deal, they shout “Tunk!” and automatically win the game.

Scoring: The non-Tunkers count their deadwood and tally it up. (Face cards count as 10, deuces not in a set count as 25, all other cards are the number value.) The first player to reach 100 is out, others keep going until only one player is left and they are the winner.

Some variations have the Tunker counting, too. In some variations, if the Tunker’s deadwood is not the lowest, it counts double. In others, if they have the lowest, it doesn’t count.

We found this game much faster and easier to pick up than last year’s Pitch, probably because we all know how to play Gin Rummy. I bet we’ll continue to play this in the future because it is fast-paced and it is easy to teach to new players.

We primarily played the 7-card version, but decided to try the 5-card version for a few rounds and it went very quickly and the wild deuces really came in handy. I think I prefer the 7-card version if we have only three players and Tunkers don’t count deadwood, but the 5-card version if we have more players and the Tunker counts their deadwood (and has the double penalty if it is not the lowest.)