Rummy Express

Rummy Express deals Indian thirteen-card rummy to the phones already sitting around the table. One player hosts, everybody else joins, and the cards go out — over Wi-Fi, over Bluetooth, or through Google Nearby.

NOTHING LEAVES THE ROOM

There is no server, no account and no sign-in. The phones talk to each other directly, and a hand exists only on the phones playing it. Bluetooth needs no network at all, which means a train, a power cut or a holiday house with no signal is still a table.

THE GAME, IN FULL

• Thirteen cards each, two to six players, one or two decks

• Two sequences to go out, and one of them without a joker

• Draw from the stock or take the discard; declare when the hand is legal

• Drops scored the usual way — twenty for a first drop, forty for a middle one

• Play hand after hand, or set a target and play a match

SHORT OF PLAYERS? SEAT A BOT

A bot is a player with no phone. Seat one, two or five of them, and give each a memory dial from 0 to 100 — the chance, each turn, that it studies what everybody has shown rather than playing its own hand alone. At 100 it remembers the discards and plays on them. At 0 it is a beginner. A table of one person and three bots plays exactly like a table of four.

BUILT FOR A REAL TABLE

• A code the host reads out, mixed into the handshake, so being in range is not the same as being invited

• A phone that drops out can come back and take its seat again

• Set the table on "Both" and a table that loses Wi-Fi carries on over Bluetooth without the game noticing

• Your hand, held full-screen and grouped the way you like it, and a Hide button for when somebody leans over

• A log of every draw, discard and drop, in plain words

• Thirteen languages: English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Urdu and Nepali; the cards stay left to right in Urdu

• Share a win: an "I won!" card with the final table, sent wherever you choose

• When a phone loses touch, the host chooses: wait for them, or drop them and play on

NO MONEY, EVER

Nothing to buy, nothing to cash out, no chips for sale, no real-money play of any kind. The scores are scores. The game is free and shows ads, never on the table while a hand is being played.

Rummy Express is one of a set built on the same card table: Teen Patti Express, Twenty Eight Express and Call Break Express play the same way, with the same bots and the same three ways of reaching the phone beside you.