play the game here (render.com takes ~30 seconds cold start the game server, so be patient).

The rules of Chinchón are very similar to those of Gin Rummy. Seven cards are dealt to each player, and the remaining cards of the deck are laid on the table face down to form the stock. The top card of this pile is then turned face up and laid beside the stock to start the discard pile. The players look at and sort their cards, and then play by turns. Each turn consists of a draw and a discard:

• One card is taken from the top of either the stock (face down) pile or the discard (face up) pile, and added to the player's hand.
• The player can then try to make combos in their hand with the new card. Each combo in the hand must have at least 3 cards, and may be a set (e.g. three 9's) or a run (e.g. 7,8,9,10). Runs must be of the same suit.
• After that, one card must be discarded from the player's hand and placed on top of the discard pile face up, so that the player always has seven cards in their hand.
• If playing with more than two players, allow the use of 2 Jokers as wild cards.

Once a player has enough combos, they may decide to "meld" their cards, laying off their hand on the table, and the round ends. That can be done when the player has 0-1 unmatched cards less than or equal to 5, called "deadwood" in Rummy. Each of the players score penalty points equivalent to the sum of the face value of the unmatched cards left in their hand. If a player has no unmatched cards, they earn a bonus of -10 points. A player automatically wins the game if they manage to make a run of seven cards, called Chinchón. If the game includes Jokers as wild cards, a run with a Joker doesn't count as a true chinchón and doesn't win the game, but still allows the -10 points bonus. If the round ends and you were not the player to end the round and you have a joker in your hand it counts for 50 penalty points.

When one of the players reaches 100 or more, they may "buy back in" exactly one time. A player who buys back in will reset their points to the second highest point total among players. When that player reaches 100 or more again, they are permanently out of the game. The last remaining player wins.

1. npm install
2. to run the game server, use npm run local
3. to run the dev UI server, use npm run dev. Requires game server to be running
4. go to localhost:8081 to see the game. This UI will dynamically update as you change the UI.
5. go to localhost:8082 to see a more productionized version of the game. It's basically the same as localhost:8081.
6. to hide the lobby for easier debugging, use REACT_APP_HIDE_LOBBY=true npm run dev