Chinchón

Chinchón is played here by four players, each for themselves, with a Spanish pack of 40 cards: coins, cups, swords and batons, numbered 1 to 7 and 10 to 12. Everyone gets seven cards. The rest form the stock, and its top card is turned up to start the discard pile. Play goes anticlockwise.

On your turn, draw the top card of the stock or of the discard pile, then discard one card face up. You can't throw back the card you just took from the discards. Try to arrange your cards into melds: sets of three or four cards of the same rank, or runs of three or more cards of one suit in order. In a run the 7 is followed by the 10, because there are no 8s or 9s.

• Instead of discarding, you may close (cortar): put a card face down when the other seven are all melded, or all but one card worth 1, 2 or 3.
• When someone closes, everyone else lays out their melds and may lay cards off on the closer's melds. They score the face value of the cards they can't place (the 10, 11 and 12 count 10, 11 and 12).
• The closer scores the value of the one card left over, or −10 with all seven melded.
• A seven-card run of one suit is a chinchón and wins the game at once.
• When the stock runs out, the discards (all but the top one) are shuffled into a new stock.
• The game ends when someone reaches 100 points. The lowest score wins.

Chinchón is played in many slightly different ways, and pagat.com, our usual source, doesn't describe it. These are our chosen rules, following English Wikipedia's description, with the closing rule (all melded, or one card of 1 to 3 left over) that most Chinchón rule sites use. Laying off on the closer's melds and the anticlockwise play (Wikipedia's summary box says clockwise) are also our choices. Common variations not offered here include wild cards (the 1 of coins, or two jokers), the 48-card pack with 8s and 9s, and Uruguay's Conga, where players over 100 can re-enter.

• On your turn, tap the stock or the discard pile to draw.
• Tap a card in your hand to discard it. Your hand is shown grouped into its best melds, each underlined in its own colour.
• When you may close, a Close (cortar) button appears. Tap it, then tap the card to put face down.

• Daily: everyone gets the same deals each day.
• New Game: a fresh game with new deals.

• Throw your 10s, 11s and 12s early unless they're already in a meld: they're expensive if someone closes.
• A pair, or two cards of a run, is half a meld. Keep them and let the single cards go.
• Watch the discards: a card the next player keeps taking tells you what they're collecting.
• Close as soon as you can unless you're close to all seven melded. Every turn you wait gives the others a chance to close first.

Chinchón is a matching card game played in Spain, Uruguay, Argentina, Cape Verde and elsewhere. According to Wikipedia, it is a close variant of gin rummy, sharing its aim of making sets and runs. In Basque and Cape Verdean Creole it's spelled Txintxon, and in Uruguay it's called Conga, or La Conga. It's played with the Spanish-suited pack of coins, cups, swords and batons, the same pack used for Truco and Brisca.

Chinchón is a free browser version of the Spanish rummy game, played against three computer players, with a daily game and online leaderboards. There's nothing to download and no sign-up.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.