Okey Rules & How to Play

Okey tiles and components

Okey is played with 106 tiles: 104 numbered tiles in four colours, thirteen ranks per colour, with two identical copies of every tile, plus two special false-joker tiles. Because every tile exists twice, you can legitimately hold two identical tiles in your hand, but the same tile can never appear twice in one run or one set.

After the deal, one tile is turned face up. This is the indicator (the gösterge). It stays visible to everyone for the whole round and is removed from play, so it can never be drawn. The indicator decides which tile is the okey, the wild joker of the round: the okey is the tile in the indicator's colour that sits next to it in rank. Both copies of that tile are wild and can stand in for any tile in a meld.

Setup and deal

Four players sit in two teams, partners opposite each other, and play goes clockwise. The player immediately after the dealer, called the head player, starts the round.

1. Shuffle all 106 tiles.
2. Deal 15 tiles to the head player and 14 tiles to every other player.
3. Turn up the indicator tile from the remaining tiles; it sets the okey for the round.
4. The rest of the tiles form the face-down draw pile. The single shared discard pile starts empty.
5. The head player already holds 15 tiles, so they skip the draw and begin by discarding (or melding and then discarding).

Objective of Okey

Your goal in each round is to be the first to empty your hand: every tile placed in valid melds on the table and your last tile discarded. Okey is scored as a penalty game, so the round winner scores zero, the losers collect penalty points, and at the end of the match the team with the lowest total wins.

How to play a turn

Every turn follows the same three steps: draw one tile, optionally meld, then discard one tile onto the shared discard pile.

1. Draw exactly one tile, either from the face-down draw pile or the top tile of the shared discard pile.
2. Optionally open, lay down more melds, or add tiles to melds already on the table.
3. Discard exactly one tile face up. You must always keep at least one tile to throw.

• If you take the top discard and then meld, that tile must be part of what you lay down.
• Changed your mind? Discarding the exact tile you just picked up puts it back, and you draw from the draw pile instead.
• If the draw pile runs out, the discards (except the top tile) are shuffled into a new pile. This can happen twice; the third time, the round is cancelled with no score.

Valid melds: runs and sets

A meld is a group of tiles laid face up on the table, and in Okey there are exactly two kinds.

• Run: 3 to 13 tiles of the same colour in consecutive order, such as 5-6-7 in red. A run can never wrap around from the highest tile back to the lowest.
• Set: 3 or 4 tiles of the same rank, each in a different colour.
• A run laid down from your hand can be at most 5 tiles long; longer runs go down in pieces. Once on the table, a run can keep growing up to 13 tiles.
• The okey (wild) can fill any gap, but each meld needs enough real tiles to show clearly what it is, so a meld cannot start with two wilds.

Opening: the 81-point rule

Your first lay-down of the round is your opening, and it must be worth at least 81 points, counted from the tiles in the melds you lay down. A wild inside a meld counts as the tile it replaces.

• After opening you may add tiles freely to any opened player's melds: yours, your partner's or an opponent's.
• Joker steal: if a meld on the table uses the okey in place of a tile you hold, you can swap your real tile in and take the okey into your hand.

Konkan: the all-or-nothing gamble

Konkan is a locked mode that turns a round into a high-stakes race. A player in Konkan can no longer open normally; the only way out is to lay down the whole hand at once as a 10-tile run plus a 4-tile meld. If a Konkan player wins, every opponent's penalty is doubled or increased.

• You fall into Konkan if you take the top discard and then discard without opening on that turn. Meld and you stay safe; take and throw and you are Konkan.
• Adding a tile to a meld on the table before you have opened also puts you in Konkan. You may do this only once per round, you cannot do it with a wild, and it permanently blocks that end of the run. Your Konkan finish then needs a 10-tile run plus a 3-tile meld.
• Taking a Konkan player's discard is free once. A second time, you must finish your hand on that turn or you are eliminated.
• An eliminated player takes no more turns, nobody may pick up their discards, and they are scored as if they never opened.

Okey scoring

When a player empties their hand, the winner and their partner score 0. Each losing opponent takes a penalty, and in a four-player game the two partners' penalties are added together into one team total.

• An okey (wild) still loose in your hand costs 25 points.
• An okey you took from the discard pile or stole from a meld costs only 2 points if you are caught with it.

Winning the match and the Determine round

A standard Okey match is 5 rounds followed by one extra Determine round. The winner of each round plays first in the next. Before the Determine round, the team with the higher (worse) total is forced into Konkan for the whole round; if the teams are exactly tied, both teams start in Konkan. After the Determine round, the team with the lowest total wins the match. Quick tables play a single round with no Determine round.

Strategy tips

• Do not rush to take from the discard pile: unless you can open that same turn, it drops you straight into Konkan.
• Watch the first opener's total. If an opponent opens big, your team's bar rises with it, so it can pay to open early with a modest 81.
• Once your partner has opened you only need 61 points, so coordinate: one strong opener makes life easier for the other.
• Get rid of a loose okey or put it in a meld before the round ends; caught in your hand it costs 25 points.
• Keep track of Konkan players' discards. Picking from them a second time forces you to finish that turn or be eliminated.
• Going Konkan on purpose is a real weapon when you already hold a long same-colour run, because a Konkan win punishes every opponent heavily.

Frequently asked questions