How to play 3-13
3-13 — also called Three Thirteen — is an eleven-round rummy for two or more players. Each round deals one more card than the last, a different rank is wild every round, and the lowest total score wins. A full game takes about forty-five minutes and one argument about whether a run can use two of the same card. (It can’t. See below.)
What you need
- Two or more players. Three or four is the sweet spot.
- One standard 52-card deck for two players; shuffle two decks together for three or four. Add another deck as the table grows.
- No jokers — unless your table plays the joker variant below.
The deal
Round one deals three cards to each player; every round after deals one more, up to thirteen cards in round eleven. The deal rotates left each round. After the deal, the next card goes face-up to start the discard pile and the rest becomes the stock.
| Round | Cards dealt | Wild rank |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 3s |
| 2 | 4 | 4s |
| 3 | 5 | 5s |
| 4 | 6 | 6s |
| 5 | 7 | 7s |
| 6 | 8 | 8s |
| 7 | 9 | 9s |
| 8 | 10 | 10s |
| 9 | 11 | Jacks |
| 10 | 12 | Queens |
| 11 | 13 | Kings |
Wild cards
The rank that matches the round’s deal is wild: 3s in the three-card round, 4s in the four-card round, and so on up to Kings in the last. A wild card stands in for any card in a set or a run. This is the rule everyone forgets mid-round — it’s why the app prints the wild rank at the top of every scoring screen.
Melds
You’re trying to arrange your whole hand into melds. Two kinds count:
- Sets — three or more cards of the same rank: 7♣ 7♦ 7♠.
- Runs — three or more consecutive cards in one suit: 4♦ 5♦ 6♦.
Aces are low: A-2-3 is a run, Q-K-A is not. A card can belong to only one meld at a time.
Two decks, one card twice? A set may contain identical twins — ♣9 ♣9 ♦9 is legal. A run may not: the second copy of a card doesn’t extend a sequence, so 4♥ 5♥ 5♥ 6♥ is not a run. Split the twins across two melds instead.
Your turn
Draw one card — the top of the stock, or the top of the discard pile. Then discard one, face up. That’s the whole turn; the skill is in what you keep.
Going out
When you can form your entire hand into melds except one card, you may go out: lay down your melds and discard the last card. Every other player then gets exactly one more turn to tidy up before the round is scored. You can’t add cards to another player’s melds.
Scoring
Only unmatched cards score, and they score against you: aces are 1, twos through tens are face value, and Jacks, Queens, and Kings are 10 each. The player who went out usually marks a zero. Totals accumulate across all eleven rounds — lowest total after the Kings round wins. Full point tables live on the scoring sheet.
House rules
Every family plays 3-13 a little differently. The four variants worth agreeing on before round one — all of them toggles in the app:
- Aces high — Q-K-A runs become legal, and an unmatched ace stings for 15 instead of 1.
- Face cards 11·12·13 — Jacks, Queens, and Kings score their sequence position instead of a flat 10.
- Jokers in play — jokers join as extra wilds; get caught holding one and it’s 20 points.
- 14-card final round — a twelfth round with fourteen cards and no wild rank, for tables that want one last white-knuckle hand.