Okey

The Object of the Game

Your goal is to reach a hand of fourteen tiles in which every single tile belongs to a valid combination, with not one spare tile left outside them.

A "valid combination" is either consecutive numbers in a single color (such as red 4, 5 and 6), or the same number in different colors (such as red 9, blue 9 and black 9), with a minimum of three tiles — and it is all set out in full in the "Valid Combinations" section below.

Once your hand is complete and you discard your spare tile, you have won the round, and the rest of you lose points.

A game does not end after a single round; a match is made up of several successive rounds: every player starts on twenty points, and loses points each time someone else wins a round. The moment any one of you reaches zero, the whole match is over, and the player left with the highest score wins it.

What the Game Contains

• One hundred and six tiles in total.
• Four colors: red, blue, black and yellow, each running through the numbers 1 to 13.
• Every tile exists in two identical copies — so there are two red 7s, for instance.
• Two special tiles with no number and no color, known as the false joker.

The Indicator and the Okey

Every round has one special tile that acts as the joker, and whoever holds it may use it in place of any tile they need to finish an incomplete combination — it is the most valuable thing in the game. But which tile is the joker? That changes from round to round, and it is decided as follows.

Before the tiles are dealt, a single tile is turned face up in front of everyone and stays visible for the whole round; it is called the indicator (the tile that points the way). Nobody may draw it or use it in their hand; its one and only job is to point to the joker.

• The Okey (the true joker): it is the tile one number above the indicator in that same color. So if the indicator is red 5, the Okey is red 6. And if the indicator is a 13, the Okey wraps around to the 1 of the same color.
• The Okey is a full wildcard: both copies of the Okey tile are jokers, each standing in for any color and any number you need in any combination, and two jokers may sit together in the same combination.
• The false joker is not a joker: the two blank tiles take on exactly the Okey's identity — its color and its number — and stand in for nothing else. If the Okey is red 6, then the false joker is red 6 and nothing more.
• The indicator is never a false joker: if a false joker comes up when the tile is turned, it goes back and another is turned in its place, so that the Okey always has a real identity.

And because knowing the Okey matters throughout the round, every tile in your hand announces itself: an ordinary tile is read out by its color and number, an Okey tile has the word "Okey" added to its name, and a false joker is read out with the Okey's identity followed by the word "false" — so there is nothing for you to keep in your head.

Setting Up the Round

• All the tiles are shuffled, and the indicator is turned face up.
• One player — the dealer for that round — takes fifteen tiles, and the other three take fourteen each.
• Forty-eight tiles are left in the draw pile in the middle.
• The dealer is the one who opens the round, and opens it by discarding without drawing, since their hand is already one tile over.
• The deal rotates: with each new round the dealer moves one seat along, so everyone takes a turn at the advantage of opening.

How a Turn Works

1. Your turn begins with fourteen tiles in your hand.
2. You draw a tile, bringing your hand to fifteen. There are two sources open to you: the tile discarded by the player immediately before you, or the face-down pile in the middle.
3. If both are available, you are offered the choice. And if the player before you has no discarded tile in front of them, the draw is taken from the pile automatically, without asking.
4. You discard one tile from your hand, returning to fourteen, and that tile goes onto your own pile.
5. Play passes to the player after you.

• Every player has their own discard pile: there is no shared discard pile in Okey. You discard onto your pile alone, and only the player immediately after you may take what you discarded.
• You may draw only from the pile of the player before you: the other players' piles are off limits to you, however much you might want what is in them.
• You may discard whatever you like: even a tile that breaks up a combination you had built in your hand. The game will not argue with your plan, nor correct it for you.
• What is heard and what is not: if you draw from the face-down pile, you alone hear the name of your tile, while the others hear only the sound of the draw without learning what you took. But if you take the discarded tile in front of you, everyone knows what you took — it was face up to begin with.

An Example of a Full Turn

You have fourteen tiles in your hand, among them red 4 and red 5, and you need either red 3 or red 6 to complete a run. Your turn comes round:

1. You hear that the player before you discarded red 6 — precisely the tile you were waiting for.
2. You press the draw key, and two options are offered: take the discarded red 6, or draw from the face-down pile.
3. You choose red 6, your hand becomes fifteen tiles, and you have a completed run (red 4, 5, 6).
4. The other players know that you took red 6, because it was face up in front of them.
5. Now you discard a spare tile that does you no good — say a lone yellow 11 — it goes onto your pile, and your hand is back to fourteen.
6. Play passes to the player after you, and they alone may take the yellow 11 you discarded.

Had there been nothing useful to you in the discard before you, you would have chosen the face-down pile — and that is a gamble: it may bring you the tile you have been dreaming of, or a tile of no use at all that you discard straight away.

Valid Combinations

Only two kinds of combination are accepted in your hand, and the smallest is three tiles:

• The set (same number): three or four tiles carrying the same number in different colors, such as red 7, blue 7 and black 7. A color may not be repeated within it, which is why it never exceeds four tiles — there are only four colors.
• The run (same color): three or more tiles with consecutive numbers in a single color, such as red 3, red 4 and red 5. There is no limit to its length; it may stretch as far as thirteen tiles.
• The rule of the 1: the number 1 works at the start of a run (1, 2, 3) and at the end of one (12, 13, 1), but it cannot serve as a bridge between 13 and 2. So (13, 1, 2) is rejected.

The Joker Inside a Combination

• The Okey stands in for any missing tile: (red 5, red 6, Okey) is a valid run, and (blue 9, yellow 9, Okey) is a valid set.
• Two Okeys may stand in within a single combination.
• The false joker, on the other hand, enters only with its known identity, and is bound by the no-repeated-color rule like any ordinary tile — so two false jokers can never sit together in one combination, since they share the same color and the same number.

Quick Examples: Valid or Not?

• Red 7, blue 7, black 7 — ✔ valid: the same number in three different colors.
• Red 7, red 7, blue 7 — ✘ invalid: red is repeated within one combination, and it makes no difference that the two tiles are genuine duplicates.
• Red 7, blue 7, black 7, yellow 7 — ✔ valid, and the longest set possible, since there are only four colors.
• Blue 8, blue 9, blue 10, blue 11 — ✔ valid: consecutive numbers in a single color, and you may extend it as far as the color allows.
• Blue 8, red 9, blue 10 — ✘ invalid: a run demands a single color.
• Blue 8, blue 10, blue 11 — ✘ invalid: there is a gap; the 9 is missing.
• Black 1, black 2, black 3 — ✔ valid: the 1 at the start of the run.
• Black 12, black 13, black 1 — ✔ valid: the 1 at the end, following the 13.
• Black 13, black 1, black 2 — ✘ invalid: the 1 cannot act as a bridge in the middle.
• Blue 9, yellow 9, two Okey tiles — ✔ valid: the two jokers stand in for red 9 and black 9.

An Example of a Complete Winning Hand

Here are fourteen tiles that all fall into place, with not one spare left over:

• Run: red 1, red 2, red 3.
• Run: blue 5, blue 6, blue 7, blue 8.
• Set: red 9, blue 9, black 9, yellow 9.
• Run: yellow 2, yellow 3, yellow 4.

3 + 4 + 4 + 3 = fourteen tiles. So the moment you discard your spare fifteenth tile, you win the round then and there.

Winning the Round

You win at the instant you discard a tile and are left with fourteen tiles, every one of them arranged and nothing spare. There is no announcement and no "I won" button: the game recognizes your win by itself, so you can never lose a winning round for forgetting to declare it. And your final tile goes to the middle rather than onto your own pile, so nobody after you can take it.

And so that you never discard a winning hand without noticing, the game alerts you audibly the moment a win becomes possible in your hand.

The Second Way to Win: Seven Pairs

There is another road to victory besides combinations: your fourteen tiles forming seven perfectly matched pairs — each pair being two tiles identical in both color and number. And an Okey may complete a pair.

An example of a winning hand of seven pairs:

• Red 1 + red 1, blue 2 + blue 2, yellow 3 + yellow 3, red 4 + red 4, blue 6 + blue 6, yellow 7 + yellow 7, and red 11 + red 11.
• Mind the matching: red 1 with blue 1 is not a pair here, since matching demands the color and the number together — and this is the reverse of an ordinary set, which demands that the colors differ.
• And if you hold just one red 11 along with an Okey tile, the Okey stands in for the second red 11 and the pair is complete.

Scoring

• An ordinary win: each of the remaining players loses two points.
• Winning by discarding the Okey itself: if your final discarded tile is the Okey, every one of them loses four points — a reward for the risk of holding on to the joker to the very end.
• Winning with seven pairs: every one of them loses four points as well.
• The loss never goes beyond four: even if both forms come together, the loss stays at four points and no more.
• The false joker is not the Okey: if your final tile is a false joker, it counts as an ordinary win worth two points, not four.
• The winner never loses points; the loss falls on the others alone.

An example: there are four of you, each on twenty points. You win an ordinary round, so your score stays at twenty and each of the other three drops to eighteen. Had you won that round by discarding the Okey itself, each of them would have dropped to sixteen.

The Show: Revealing the Indicator's Twin

The face-up indicator has a second copy somewhere, and it may well be in one of your hands. Whoever finds it in their hand is offered — privately, without the other players — the chance to show it.

• Showing takes one point off every other player, and costs its holder nothing.
• The chance ends with your first move: the offer is made at the deal, before anyone has moved; once you draw or discard, the door closes and showing is no longer accepted.
• If you decline the offer, or ignore it and play on, nobody's score changes.
• The other players hear that the show took place and what it cost them, so their scores never change in silence.

A Drawn Round

The face-down pile may run out before anyone has won. At that point the next player is left with one option: to take the discarded tile in front of them and play on — and they may genuinely win with it. If they decline it and have nothing left to draw, the round ends with no winner and not a single point lost by anyone, and a new round begins.

Sorting Your Hand

This is the feature that makes Okey so comfortable to play by ear: your hand sorts itself. Sorting is not a command you run once, but a property that stays with your hand — the moment you choose a sorting mode it is reapplied after every draw and every discard, so each new tile drops into its proper place instead of being dumped at the end of the hand. Your choice stays with you for the whole match, and has no effect on how anyone else's hand is sorted.

There are four sorting modes; you cycle through them with a single key, and the name of the mode is spoken as you select it:

• By color: the tiles of each color gather together in ascending order — the best fit for hearing the runs you are building.
• By number, ascending: equal numbers gather together, from lowest to highest — the best fit for hearing sets.
• By number, descending: the same again, but from highest to lowest, for anyone who prefers to start from the other end.
• Smart grouping: the most powerful of them; your valid combinations are brought to the front and the spare tiles pushed to the end of the hand, so you can tell by ear how far you are from winning without counting tile by tile.

An Example: The Same Hand in All Four Sorting Modes

Suppose your hand holds these tiles, and they reached you in random order:

Yellow 13, blue 5, black 3, black 4, black 5, red 5, black 6

• By color: red 5, then blue 5, then black 3, black 4, black 5 and black 6, then yellow 13. (Each color together, ascending within it.)
• By number, ascending: black 3, black 4, red 5, blue 5, black 5, black 6, yellow 13. (You hear the three 5s side by side and realize you are close to a set.)
• By number, descending: yellow 13, black 6, black 5, blue 5, red 5, black 4, black 3.
• Smart grouping: black 3, black 4, black 5, black 6 — a complete, valid run, read out first — followed by the three spares: yellow 13, blue 5, red 5. So you know at once that you have one combination ready and three tiles that have yet to find a home.

Notice in the example that smart grouping preferred the four-tile run (black 3, 4, 5, 6) over breaking it up to build the set of 5s — because it always looks for the arrangement that leaves the fewest spare tiles.

Controls and Shortcuts

Long press is the same on Android and iPhone, so the "three fingers instead of two" rule applies to the swipe gestures alone.

As for discarding, it needs no shortcut at all: simply choose the tile from your hand and it is discarded straight away, with no special mode and no confirmation.

Points Worth Noting

• The game is for exactly four players, and will not start with any other number.
• You can fill the empty seats with bots that play a serious game, so there is no waiting around for three other players.
• Scores only ever go down, never up: they start at twenty and end at zero, which is why there is no "maximum score" in this game.
• Whoever reaches zero or below brings the match to an end, and the player left with the highest score wins it.
• The two copies of any given tile are completely interchangeable, so it makes no difference which of them you discard.
• You can save the table mid-game and pick the match up later: your hand, its sorting, your score and the state of the round all come back exactly as you left them.