Okey (Turkish pronunciation: [ˈocej]) is a tile-based game, popular in Turkey, of the rummy family. The aim of the game is to score points against the opposing players by collecting certain groups of tiles. It is usually played with four players, but can also be played with only two or three players.
Setting up the game
The 106 tiles are placed face down on the table and thoroughly mixed. Next, the players stack the tiles face down in groups of 5, creating a total of 21 stacks. There is no specific rule about how many stacks should be in front of each player. It is convenient to have at least six in front of the dealer, but this makes no real difference to the game. One tile remains unstacked and is kept by the dealer briefly. The dealer is randomly chosen at the start and passes to the right after every round. The dealer then throws a die to determine on which stack the one remaining tile will be placed upon. For example if a 6 is thrown, the tile is placed on the sixth stack in front of the dealer (counting from left). If the number thrown is greater than the number of stacks in front of the dealer, then the count will continue using the stacks in front of the player to dealer's right, and one of these will be selected. The selected stack now has six tiles. Next, the dealer throws the die for a second time to determine which tile will be shown face-up. The second throw selects one of the tiles in the selected stack, counting upwards from the bottom of the stack. The selected tile is extracted from the stack and placed face-up on top of it. If the selected tile is a false joker, it is returned to the selected stack and the second throw of the die is repeated until a numbered tile is selected. This face-up tile helps determine the "joker" (okey) and "false joker" (sahte okey) for the game. The color and value of the joker and the false joker changes every round.
Determination of joker The face-up tile on top of the stack helps determine the joker. The joker has the same color as this face-up tile. And its number for is +1 of this tile. For example, if the face up-tile is the red 10, the red 11s become jokers. If the face up tile is a 13, the 1s of the same colour become jokers. The joker is a very useful tile, because it functions as a wild tile that can be used to represent other tiles to complete a combination. Players with the joker tile are free to assign for themselves which color and number the joker tile will represent.
Determination of false joker The face-up tile on top of the stack also helps determine the false joker. The false jokers are not wild - they are used only to represent the tiles that have become jokers. So for example, if the red 11s became the jokers, then the false jokers are played as red 11s (and cannot represent any other tile). New players may wonder why false joker tiles aren't used as joker themself. A possible reason can be that through any defect in the tiles, some players learn to recognise the false jokers from the back, that would give them an unfair advantage. If a different tile is used as the joker in each game, recognising a joker from the back becomes much more difficult.
Distribution of the tiles After determining the joker and the false joker, the stacks of tiles are distributed among the players. The player to dealer's right will receive 15 tiles and the others 14 each. The player to the right of the dealer takes the next stack after (to the right of) the selected stack with the face up tile on top of it, then the player opposite the dealer takes the following stack, and so on anticlockwise around the table, until each player has two stacks (10 tiles). Now the player to the dealer's right receives the whole of the next stack, but the player sitting opposite the dealer is given only the top 4 tiles of the following stack. The player to the dealer's left receives the last tile of this stack and 3 tiles from the top of the next stack, and finally the dealer takes the last 2 tiles from this stack and 2 from the next stack. In the above diagram the dealer threw a 5, placed the spare tile on top of the 5th stack from her left. She then threw a 2, and took the second tile from the bottom of the selected stack and placed it on top. It is a red 4, so red 5s will be jokers for this deal. Now player 2 must take stack 'a', player 3 stack 'b', player 4 'c', player 1 'd', player 2 'e', player 3 'f', player 4 'g', player 1 'h' and player 2 'i'. Next player 3 takes the top 4 tiles of stack 'j', player 4 the last tile of 'j' and three from 'k', and player 1 two from 'k' and two from 'l'. All the players should arrange their tiles so that they can see their faces but the other players cannot. Wooden racks are often used for this. The remaining tiles are left for the players to draw from during the game. They are moved to the middle of the table, without looking at them or disturbing their order.
Play Before the round starts, a player can score a point if the player holds the tile that matches the face-up tile. If the player doesn't show the tile to others, it will miss out the point. Now the player to the dealer's right begins the play by discarding one tile, face up. After this, each player in turn may either take the tile just discarded by the previous player, or draw the next tile from the supply in the centre of the table, and must then discard one unwanted tile. This continues in anticlockwise rotation until a player forms a winning hand and exposes it, ending the play. Discarded tiles are placed to the right of the player who discarded them, in a stack, so that only the most recent discard in the stack is visible. The usual rule is that the player is allowed to look through all the tiles in the discard stacks to their right (tiles they discarded) and to their left (tiles they had an opportunity to take), but they can only see the exposed top tiles of the two discard stacks on the other side of the table. Tiles are always drawn from the top of the next available stack. When only the final stack of 6 tiles remains, the exposed tile is removed from the top of this stack and the other five tiles are drawn in order. The exposed tile (the red 4 in the example diagrams) can never be drawn. When there are no tiles left in the centre except the single exposed tile, if the next player to play does not want to take the previous player's discard, the play ends because there are no cards left to draw.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
