A contract rummy with a ladder: each player has their own contract to make, and every time you lay it down you climb a rung. Ten rungs, ten deals, two packs and three jokers.
Ladder Rummy is played by four players, each for themselves, with two standard packs and three jokers. Everyone gets ten cards, the rest form the stock, and one card is turned up to start the discard pile. Play goes clockwise.
There are two kinds of meld. A group is three or more cards of the same rank. A run is four or more cards of one suit in order, with the Ace low (A 2 3 4) or high (J Q K A) but not both. Jokers are wild and can stand for any card, but a meld needs at least two real cards, and a melded joker stays where it is.
Each player has a contract to make, their rung on the ladder: 1, two groups of 3; 2, a group of 3 and a run of 4; 3, two runs of 4; 4, three groups of 3; 5, a group of 4 and a run of 4; 6, two groups of 3 and a run of 4; 7, a run of 7; 8, two groups of 4; 9, a run of 4 and a run of 6; 10, a group of 3 and a run of 7.
The melds, the laying off and the penalties follow pagat.com's description of Contract Rummy and its "May I?" variant, which lets extra cards go into the contract and keeps jokers where they're laid. The personal ladder of ten contracts, the ten-deal game, ten cards in every deal, melds needing at least two real cards, and not throwing back the card you just took from the discards are ours. In classic Contract Rummy everyone plays the same contract each deal. We left out the "May I?" rule of taking discards out of turn.
Contract rummy games are played over a series of deals, each with a contract of groups and runs that must be made before a player can meld. According to pagat.com, the original game of the family was Zioncheck, invented by Ruth Armson in the 1930s, with six contracts. Pagat.com describes Contract Rummy, Liverpool Rummy, May I?, Shanghai Rummy and Progressive Rummy as so similar that they can almost be regarded as variations of the same game. Ladder Rummy is our own take on the idea, in which each player climbs their own ladder of contracts at their own pace.
Ladder Rummy is a free browser card game, played against three computer players, with a daily game and online leaderboards. There's nothing to download and no sign-up.