Gin Rummy Classic Reviews

After about 1500 points, I started noticing odd things. Like whatever number card i needed, that number in another suit appeared the next move. Consistently. Or something I discarded would appear in the ai opponent’s meld, but they didn’t pick up my discard. Or how I would consistently lose to a particular opponent by a large margin who seemed to always have all the cards within one or two draws. I thought it was just in my head, so I kept playing. Only to realize these events were becoming a predictable pattern. Not so much with the opponents but the cards. There’s more, so I’m uninstalling and finding a different game. It was fun while it lasted.

You would expect GinRummyClassic to be “random” and apply logic for the computer/competitor. But it takes cards and changes/buries them. For example, it picked up a 2 of diamonds off the pile, then knocked without discarding nor playing the card. You’ll notice sometimes you get every card you need one after another, and sometime the “computer” does. Again, fun, and a decent substitute for live play. But the lack of randomness, if you play enough, is clear and aggravating.

No real randomness here. Want to prove it? Wait until you’ve been soundly trounced by the AI. Then they will try to keep us from a rage quit by easy win right? So just try to lose with the next opponent. It can’t be done. I made no melds but still draw cards that I could use. I refused to knock but then ended up with an undercut bonus and won twice.

Want more proof? The AI ALWAYS picks up ace, twos and threes — that’s the way it’s programmed to meld w low cards and is always dealt some.

Gin Rummy is so addictive they don’t care if their game is mediocre. I winder if it’s a great deal of work to have a more sophisticated AI.

I have to wonder about the developers. I have played Gin Rummy for decades…will real hand-held cards if you can believe it! This game is a lot of fun, yet exceedingly frustrating. All the negative reviews are spot on. While my winning percentage is better than my losing percentage, I’m not convinced it’s worth 5 bucks a month. So I’ve downloaded Hearts and Spades as well to fool myself into believing I’m getting my money’s worth. In any case, all these card games are addictive, but fall way short of expectations. I suppose I could be spending my dough on things more ridiculous. The graphics, layout, and animations are terrific so…guess I’ll keep playing until I quit playing :)
Update 10/1. I made to level 163, but I will be deleting this game, and the other card games from Arcade. In addition to all the accurate negative reviews, I find it extremely odd that the developers don’t bother responding…at all. The games are in pretty packages, but are so poorly developed. It’s all about the $5 monthly subscription fees. What a racket. Apple, you should address the poor quality of the games you endorse. I’m out

As I’ve played this game longer, the computer just constantly is able to go out after 2-3 rounds and I keep getting stuck with crazy high points. It’s really beyond natural odds. I am getting tired of games that try to make it more challenging, but the only way they know how is to make the computer have unrealistically great odds.

That is not a more challenging play because you’re up against a good player, it is more challenging because you’re always beat by something that has phenomonally great hands almost every time.

Please address this or I will be removing the game from my device. I love card games and love a challenging opponent, but this is right up there with cheating in my book.

In general the ai plays for lowest deadwood and discards strictly defensive. So once you know that the game becomes completely dependent on the deal and draw. It seems like either the ai or the player runs away with the game 90% of the time. The lack of close games seems very un-random. I have also noticed that occasionally the player does not lay off cards that it clearly should. It is hard to catch because the animation is fast but if you watch you can see it.

Update: Changed to 2 stars. Once I got into the gold tiers the game was no fun. The ai opponent didn’t get better the deals are just stacked against the player.

I've won the first 34 games I've played on the competitive level. I've been playing gin for more than 60 years and used to be very good but I'm 75, my short term memory is shot and I can no longer remember the cards. I'm really just winging it at this point. So I shouldn't win every game. I've played many computer opponents on expert level and I usually win 60 to 70% of games. So I'm not sure how competitive this AI is. Does it get better as you progress through the levels?

This game is decent at best but for someone like me that actually plays cards with people a lot especially cribbage this game only takes low cards in the discard pile it never takes high cards and that is highly unrealistic for General Rummy the randomization of cards is far from realistic I play other cribbage games and it’s the same thing the randomization is far from real…. The only reason for three stars is this game passes time that’s all it does

Gin Rummy + is a decent card game with some enjoyable features, particularly the multiplayer mode, which stands out compared to the computer mode. The computer’s gameplay could use some fine-tuning for accuracy and realism.

One area for improvement is the graphical actions between hands, which can be unnecessarily time-consuming. Many players may not realize that tapping the screen speeds up this process, leading to frustrating delays of 30-60 seconds between hands. This isn’t an issue in the developer’s other game, Spades+, which handles transitions more smoothly.

Overall, it’s a solid game, but with some tweaks, especially in pacing and AI, it could be even better.

The game follows a very predictable pattern. You start winning big and often, as you progress through levels you win games less often, and hands by fewer points. It still throws you some big hands for a few consecutive blowouts of your opponents here and there, but it’s nothing like when you first started the game. So…no really skill or even chance like you’d get out of a real life game, but if you know what it is, then you know what to expect. Wish it were a bit more randomized, but I’m guessing this algorithm wasn’t built for Apple Arcade, but to pull in revenue, and just adapted slightly for free play.

1) No ability to play a full match, only games to 50 or 100. I like playing matches to 500, using normal scoring rules for gin rummy, and there’s just no way to play that way in this game.

2) Occasionally it does not show the hands at the end of the game and instead just informs me of point totals. I just finished one where they knocked while I had 7 deadwood, and it just gave my opponent one point. I didn’t see the final hand, and that’s a shame.

Besides the annoyance of it asking for a review everyday. This game is fun, it has good settings so you can set the game to your level of experience. Where it misses is the time waste of giving you points after every hand so you can progress up the nonsense levels. Then when you finish a game it makes you wait for an opponent, as if there’s another human there, but it’s just the computer. If you got rid of these time wasters I’d give you 5 stars, or at least make them optional.
Question, is there a way to play against other people, actual humans?

Overall the gameplay is okay. But it seems the logic often makes similar choices, like it always runs out the high card first and hangs onto the low cards. It also will get rid of the same number that you discard. The oddest part is the occurrences of aces. I’d be hard pressed to see a single hand without at least 2 aces in play…usually it is 3 of them…sometimes all 4.

It’s an OK game. I don’t see the cheating people claim. Yes, the computer gets some quick knocks from time to time, but so do I. I’ve been playing a while and am at Master I level. The computer plays a tight, defensive strategy that can be tough to beat until you learn how (and *when*) to beat it, but it can be done once you learn how. (People claiming to never get the cards they need may be speculating too much or not know how to beat this strategy. I’m winning more than losing at my current level, and I’m not a card player. Gin Rummy and Euchre are the only games I don’t embarrass myself playing.)

My biggest complaints are the boring strategy employed by the AI (but I’m not a programmer, and that *may* be the only strategy that an engine can use to play at a high level?) and the animations that cut too early on occasion (and take too long when the do go). Also, the computer assumes the melds you want to make and won’t readjust the melds when you select a discard that breaks a meld it thinks you should. This can be confusing and is critical in late game decisions. (It also is “taking advice from the opponent”, which is never a good strategy.)

Still a relatively decent game.

It’s a nice game truly but my issues are some needed options. I want to be able to turn off the tips and be able to organize my own hand. Having the cards automatically put into melds gives me no control. I get to choose a card, a discard and when to knock. This doesn’t okay true to the ever changing strategy of gin. I find that I don’t play this as often because if this. It would be really great to have these options.

Overall, it does pass the time and it is challenging. However, there are a couple of issues I’d like to raise. First of all, the emojis are useless. I can’t even use them. The more annoying thing about them is I’m getting kind of tired of my opponent (I’m guessing it’s a computer) laughing when it’s about to knock. That’s just stupid. I don’t need your game to laugh at me while I’m trying to relax.

The second thing is that it appears to be rigged against you. The number of times the opponent beats you quickly and you have no decent draws far outweighs the number of times you can knock quickly and your opponent has a hand full of garbage cards. Also, the number of times you draw a low number card at the beginning of the (and well into it too) is ridiculously low. They seem to stack the deck with high cards in the first half of the draws. Annoying!

I did give four stars, but really only because it’s Apple Arcade and there’s no annoying ads or pop ups begging you to buy stuff. Otherwise, it would have been 3 stars.

The gameplay on this game is excellent, except one flaw. I am a statistician by training. The draw cards are not statistically random. After calculating across 40 games, it has become very apparent that the draw pile is approximately six times more likely to reveal a face card than any other card. Across those games, the draw pile produced a face card an average of 2.3 cards of the first 4 drawn. As there are only three face cards per 13 cards in each suit, the odds are with 95% confidence that the card dealing is not statistically random.

First off, great game, but I can already tell I’m going to get bored of it. Here’s why:

The computer opponent does not play like a real human. Unless the computer is dealt a meld with high cards, all it does is rush to discard everything high for a quick knock. Although this is a viable strategy in Gin Rummy for humans, it is not done near as often in real Gin as it is done by the algorithms that drive this particular game. So now I have to change my real world strategy to best this game, which is not hard. If I am not dealt a high card meld right off the bat, I immediately begin shedding high cards in anticipation of an opponent knock. I will literally sit with a single ace in the hole and wait for the computer to knock. I will not knock myself because I know I will get a quick 25 pts for an undercut.

And the complaints of this game “cheating” are unfortunately somewhat accurate. Too often, as soon as I give up on a meld, the opponent will drop my needed card, like it knows what I was waiting for. It happens far too often to be a coincidence.

Like I said, good game. I will keep playing. But it needs some tweaks.

My uncle who passed last year taught me how to play Gin Rummy, we used to play every time he’d come to town to visit it’s been fun to be able to play this game again as it brings me back so many pleasant memories. my only few complaints about the game is that it automatically makes melds for you and sometimes it messes up my hand completely and you can’t really adjust the melds to be like you previously had them which can be really annoying and cost you a game.. At the end of a game the post game animations and everything becomes quite annoying because it takes quite a while and you can’t really skip that stuff and i wish you could. Aside from those few things overall i have a fun time playing this game 👍🏽

First time player of this arcade game and long time Gin player. I find it odd that the opponent hand can consistently have 1 - 3 points after two plays. I’ll keep playing today, but will probably delete it later. It has stopped being fun.