Gin rummy players have been called the largest coup therapy crowd in the world. Personally, I don’t believe they are curable. Unlike alcoholics, who repeatedly claim—just before they fall sprawling on the floor—”I can take the stuff or let it alone,” a gin player never makes such a strong assertion. Once addicted, he knows that he can’t kick the habit.

 Gin players have penetrated and gained a foothold in every form of governmental, public, and private life. Physically, they are a congenial and unrecognizable group. You can’t stand in a crowd, stretch out your arms in any direction and fail to touch one of them. If they were a fifth column infiltrating our nation from a foreign power, the FBI would be powerless unless they knew the one infallible method of detection: riffle a pack of  playing cards. This familiar sound, upon reaching their ears, causes a transformation that quickly separates them from other citizens. Yes, there is something special about a gin rummy player..

There is also something extra-special about the wife or husband of a gin rummy player. Otherwise, long, never ending lines would form in front of divorce courts as gin rummy addicted spouses stayed out later and later at night. Medals should be cast for those wives and husbands who bear the cross. Fortunately, many of them find a happy solution by taking up the game themselves.

Unless you’re playing to pick up a tab or the equivalent, gin is essentially a serious game. It’s like sitting in a session of the Supreme Court. One of the unwritten rules is to keep your conversation to a bare minimum. This is impossible to enforce. To deprive a player of grousing, grumbling, and complaining is akin to destroying personal liberty should he be losing. On the other hand, how can you keep a winner from telling jokes?

When comedian Phil Silvers sits down to play gin, kibitzers draw close, expecting to hear some choice ad libs. They seldom do. Silvers, one of the glibbest talkers on television, is blanketed by silence. He’s all concentration—which he should be— and has no time for bon most.

Silvers, along with entertainer Tony Martin, George Jesse, Milton Berle, George Raft, the Ritz Brothers, Joey Bishop, abetted by former Los Angeles Mayor Sam Forty, millionaire chain shoe store owner Harry Karl, plus other names that make the news, play at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills.

Here, in a plush setting governed by club rules, are some of the leading gin rummy luminaries in the United States, a statement that would be instantly disputed by thousands, due to the fact that few players of this game concede to anyone in skill.

Harry Ritz, a round-the-world gin expert, plays what I’d call a “cagey but consistent” game. He plays like an automaton whether he’s stuck a hundred points or is four to the good. A losing streak never frustrates him. For variation, he may pick up four cards that won’t match any of his sequences, if he has a bad hand. Behind his chair there’s often a whisper, “Harry plays a crazy game.” He’s crazy like the proverbial fox. Undoubtedly, Harry shows a neat profit through the years.

He has his own gin philosophy. He says, “A guy will claim, ‘I don’t know what it is, but I lose to you every time. I beat everybody else. Not you. You’re a jinx!’ “With gin players this complaint is predominant,” Harry contends. “There’s no such thing as a jinx. The one called ‘a jinx’ is simply a better player. But who will admit it? Surely not another gin player.”

Harry believes that if you lose a lot of points  you should jump right up and quit. “Just say, ‘I’m tired,’ or, ‘I’ve sprained my wrist dealing.’ Or, ‘I’ve got a cramp.’ Back off. Don’t give him a chance to beat you for any more. There’s always tomorrow and maybe a better run of cards. It’s ethical enough,” he maintains, “to quit in gin when you feel like it. In poker it’s a breach of etiquette.”

                 There are two versions of how gin rummy originated. One has the game invented by the Spanish, who named it Con Queen, which was changed by the English to Coon-Can, the slaiig version being more pronounceable. It spread to Mexico and like marijuana came across the border, where it proved to be a far orepopular and legal pastime.

             The other claim—and the one generally accepted— is that the game was born at the Knickerbockers Whist Club in New York City, sired by Elwood T. Baker, and was first called “Baker’s Gin.” The name Gin was suggested by Mr. Baker’s son, Graham. The year was 1909.

            In 1939, after a slow start, the game spread like a prairie wildfire throughout the nation, becoming an overnight craze and bursting into popularity  that has never diminished. Nervous Hollywood movie moguls found it a relaxing tonic for frayed nerves, and on a clear night voices from private yachts anchored off Catalina could be heard crying, “I knock with three.”

           Today the gin bug has bitten approximately 100 million American card players of all sizes, shapes, and ages. The bug—highly contagious—infects its victims with an incurable virus, producing a perpetual state of bliss and confidence so that every player believes he’s an expert. It is powerful enough to mesmerize strong men, and the formation of a Gin Rummy Anonymous Club would be necessary to effect a cure. Breaking the addiction is as difficult as breaking into Fort Knox.

          Proof of the popularity of the game is demonstrated by the script change in the motion picture Gold finger, a James Bond thriller from the pen of Ian Fleming. In the Fleming book the arch villian Goldfinger is cheating at canasta by receiving information on his opponent’s hand through a receiving set disguised as a hearing aid, transmitted by his secretary who has a powerfultelescope trained on the cards.                                                  

                Whoever the powers might be behind the adaptation of the book to the cinema, they decided to substitute gin rummy for canasta for reasons of audience appeal. That gin is a game of intensive concentration is perhaps best illuminated by an anecdote. This concerns a man who, playing for huge stakes, lost for six consecutive sessions. Thoroughly disgusted, he pushed back his chair, stood up and declared. “Good night. I’m going home. This house is unlucky for me and I’ll never play here again.” His opponent gently reminded him, “But this is your house.”                                                                          

             Anyone can play gin rummy. As in learning to drive a car, you can pick up the rudiments very quickly. But that doesn’t mean you’re ready to take a spin on the freeway. The ordinary player considers that he has graduated from gin rummy school once he knows the difference between knocking and ginning. He then proceeds boldly out into the competitive world of gin rummy, convinced he has the game down pat. Such a player is not playing gin rummy; he is playing at gin rummy. Like it or not, he’ll be getting lessons as long as he continues to play—but more often than necessary they’ll be costly lessons, in the form of trouncing at the table.

              As you continue into the remainder of this book, you can make yourself not just a player but a winner. Study my principles of sound play and you can make your entrance—or re-entrance—into the big big world of gin rummy an auspicious and winning one.

               If you’re a novice at the game, don’t be disheartened. Actually, you may have a slight advantage over the old-timers whose bad playing habits are deeply ingrained. You will have less to unlearn before starting off on the sure path to successful play. To play gin rummy you need two things: A regulation deck of fifty-two cards and an opponent. Both are simple to obtain.