Chips
Everyone plays every round. Lowest score wins.
A fast, welcoming rummy game that's been in the Dalton family for three generations — nobody sits out, and you'll learn it in five minutes.
2+players
8rounds
~80years in the family
Everyone plays every round. Lowest score wins.
A fast, welcoming rummy game that's been in the Dalton family for three generations — nobody sits out, and you'll learn it in five minutes.
How a round works
Every round follows the same shape. Learn this and you can play tonight — the finer points come after.
Three cards to everyone. The player left of the dealer gets an extra card and opens by discarding it.
On your turn take a card — off the deck or from the discard pile — then throw one away. Build sets and runs.
When your whole hand forms groups, call chips. Everyone else gets one last turn.
Count the cards left in your hand. Grouped cards and wildcards score zero. Lowest total wins.
The rules
Two or more players. One standard pack (with jokers) comfortably handles up to four players; add a pack for roughly every four more, and the game plays best up to about eight.
You'll also want pen and paper — or a phone — to keep a running score across the rounds.
Across a series of rounds you arrange your hand into groups. Any cards left over count against you. The winner is whoever finishes the whole game with the lowest total score.
A group is three or more cards, of one of two kinds:
Set three or more cards of the same value, any suits — for example three 8s.
Run three or more cards of sequential value in the same suit — for example 4-5-6 of hearts.
Aces may be high or low in a run (A-2-3 or Q-K-A), but a run may not wrap around the top (K-A-2 is not allowed).
Every 2 and every joker is wild, and can stand in for any card in a set or a run — two 8s plus a wildcard make a set; 5-6 of hearts plus a wildcard make a run.
Wildcards are worth zero when scoring, so they're never a liability to hold.
The dealer deals three cards to each player, except the player to their left, who gets one extra. Put the rest face down in the middle as the deck.
Don't turn a card over — the discard pile starts when the player with the extra card opens by discarding one.
Play moves to the left. On your turn, take one card — either off the top of the deck, or from the discard pile, where you may take the top card or any card up to three deep. Then discard one card.
Keep going around the table, drawing and discarding, working your hand toward complete groups.
When your whole hand forms groups, announce “chips.” A few things to know:
• Even if you're dealt a complete hand, you must still take and discard a card on your turn before you can call.
• Keep your hand concealed until everyone has taken their last turn — no collusion.
• Once you lay your groups down and announce how they're arranged, they can't be rearranged.
• Other players may then add their loose cards to your groups. A wildcard already in a run can't be swapped out, and with more than one pack only one of any exact card goes on a run — first to lay it down and call its value wins the spot.
Each player scores the value of the cards left in their hand that aren't in a group. Number cards score their face value, an Ace scores 1, and J/Q/K score 10. Wildcards and any grouped cards score zero. The player who called chips scores nothing.
Hands grow each round — three cards each, then four, five, and so on up to ten. The deal and the extra card rotate one seat to the left each round, so everyone takes a turn with the extra card.
After the final round, the lowest total score wins. If there's a tie, the player who called chips most often wins; if still tied, compare totals after the round of nine, then eight, and so on back down the rounds.
Origins
Chips has been played in the Dalton family, in England, for around eighty years — across three generations.
As far as we can tell it exists nowhere else: there's no reference to it online, by name or by rules. It's a family creation, written down here so it can be taught and passed on.
Its closest published relative is Three Thirteen, an American rummy variant — but Chips has its own signature: calling chips with a final turn for everyone, the rotating extra card, drawing up to three deep, laying off onto the winner, and its own tie-breakers.
For the card-game curious
If you know rummy, here's what makes Chips its own game rather than a re-skin.
Keep & share
A clean copy to keep in the card box, so the rules are always with the deck.
Download the rules (PDF)Variants
The rules above are the official game and don't change. These are optional adaptations for particular situations — nothing here replaces the core rules.
For nine or more players, deal the extra card to a random player each round instead of rotating it — never the same person twice. Because chips can be called quickly with many players, this stops people to the right of the dealer never getting a turn.
For a big crowd, try splitting into two tables of six and play two games at once. The winning team is decided by a combination of three factors: