Tue. Oct 8th, 2024

Pay me is a fun game to play with friends although it does take a long time to get through an entire game. Normally you play with money, although it’s not a requirement. The card game Pay Me is part of the Rummy family, which means you will be melding runs.

How to Play Pay Me

To begin you will need two full decks of cards, which should include the jokers. The wild cards in the game include jokers, all 2’s and the number of the cards in your hand. For example, round one consists of three cards, making all threes in round one wild. Round two consists of four cards which means all 4s are wild.

The object of the game is to make a run by having a straight of the same suit or a group (e.g three of a kind, four of a kind, five of a kind and so on).

The dealer will begin by dealing each player three cards face down and turning next card in the deck face up.

The first person to play will have three options. If they have a run of three they can say “Pay Me”, they can pick up the turned up card or they can pick up from the top of the deck. If you pick up a card, you must discard from your hand.

The same three options will be available to all players.

Once a player has said Pay Me, the rest of the table will have one more chance to complete their hands. If another player has a Pay Me, they can pass rather than picking up another card.

After each player has had a chance to play their hand, the player that called “Pay Me” will turn over their cards and call out the runs they created. The other players will then turn over their cards. Any loose cards that haven’t been combined in a run can be used in combination with the dealers hand, however, players can not replace cards.

As an example if the player that called “Pay Me” laid down a 6s 2d 7s Joker (which represents a 6s 7s 8s 9s), players lay down a 5 or a 10, but not any of the cards already in play for that run.

If you can’t play a card you have to pay for that card.

Once the hand is complete a new round will begin and the dealer will deal each player four cards face down. Each round will increase in cards until players have reached 14 cards (representing an Ace) at which point the deal will decrease until you are back to three cards.

Paying in Pay Me

Normally you would play this game with money. The first deal requires each player to ante into the pot. When a player announces Pay Me, each player will pay the Pay Me player one coin, and the Pay Me player will ante one coin into the pot.

When a round finishes, you must pay one coin for each card that doesn’t complete a hand. If you have three remaining cards, you will pay the person that called Pay Me, three coins.

To finish the game, you must go from 3 cards to 14 cards and back down to 3 for a total of 22 deals. Once you reach three again, the player that called the most Pay Me wins the pot.

 

By admin

22 thoughts on “How to Play Pay Me”
    1. We normally play match the pot. If someone calls a pay me in error, that person has to match the amount of the pot. If you have to donate extra money, you are more likely to pay attention to your cards.

  1. We play a similar game called 65. In a mobile home community here in Florida, lots of snow-birds, may have up to 7 or 8 tables of up to 6 people and we need a new score sheet original that we can copy. Can anyone help?

  2. After the first round when you lay your cards down. when the second rounds start do you pick up the cards you lay down or they stay on the table after laying them down and deal 4 cards for the second round and so on?

  3. ? after we deal 3 cards each in payme, the 3 person says he has payme, but it wasn’t his turn yet, ?is he allowed to talk and declare payme before his turn comes,

    thanks
    orly

  4. How many card decks I need for 2 players, 4 players or 6 players ?

    What is a max players per game & where I can get score sheet for Pay Me Game.

    Please advise , Thank You

    Please advise , Thank You

  5. Very similar to the commercial game Five Crowns, which has a double deck of five suits (the four traditional suits, plus stars), in ranks 3 through King, plus lots of Jokers.

  6. We play a similar way only the number of cards in your hand is the card that is wild, i.e. three cards, threes are wild and so on up to kings being wild (13 cards). When someone says Pay Me, he receives a nickel from each player. Those who do not complete their hands get points totalled and the person who finishes the game with the LEAST points gets a dime from the other players. It costs 65 cents to play one game (if you don’t ever say Pay Me).

  7. Would you please email me a score sheet for “payme” or tell me where I can get one?

    Thank you in advance,
    Bill

  8. After pay me is layed down, how does the meld from other players go? Do you take turns or does everyone just try to get their card in first in a run? Since we play with 2 decks a lot of times 2 players want to play on a run hand. We have 8 people.

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