This is a game that is growing in popularity. Like Canasta Rummy it was invented during the 1930’s. The inventor was a Romanian who immigrated to Palestine named Ephraim Hertzano. He made the very first set himself in his backyard to play with his family. It has all the fun and complexity of rummy, dominoes and mahjong with a few elements of chess thrown in for good measure. The family eventually licensed the game to countries outside of Israel and it soon became its number one export game. It landed at the top of the best selling game list in America in 1977.
The two main character differences that this game has is one, the tools of the game and two, is the fact that players can take apart melds to use the tiles in other melds in an attempt to get rid of their tiles.
The tools of the game are quite dynamic in themselves. There are two sets of tiles with four different colors. These tiles are numbered from 1-13 and they also include jokers. Like most other card games it is designed for 2-4 players with the objective being to get rid of all the tiles first.
The sets and runs are also a bit different. A set can be made with tiles of the same number but different colors and runs are sequences in the same color scheme.
Although a player is allowed to disassemble a meld, they must first meet these condition have a meld with at least a 30 point value, add at least one tile to the meld and that they make valid melds only. In the game of Rummikub the two joker tiles can be used for any other tile to form a meld but be warned if you get caught with a joker it is 30 penalty points to you.
