Rummy is a group of card games notable for gameplay based on the matching of similar playing cards. Although the word "Rummy" is often used as a stand-in for the specific game "Gin Rummy", the term is applicable to a large family of games, including Canasta and Mah Jong. David Parlett (The Penguin Book of Card Games, 1978) describes the Mexican game of Conquian as being ancestral to all rummy games.

A book consists of at least three cards of the same rank or consecutive cards of the same suit. This is an almost universal pattern, although there exist minor variations, such as allowing only melds of the first type or requiring in melds of the second type that the cards are all of the same suit or that the cards are all of a different suit. In some games it is required that the melds of the second type contain at least four cards.

Some games also feature wild cards, which can be used to represent any card in a meld. The number of wild cards in a meld may be restricted. A fairly large number of cards is used.

This varies from one standard deck upwards. There are, for example, games that use five standard decks plus some jokers shuffled together.

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