Hertzano sold these sets door-to-door and on a consignment basis at small shops. He hand-made the first sets with his family in the backyard of his home. Rummikub was invented by Ephraim Hertzano, a Romanian-born Jew, who emigrated to Modern day Israel in the 1940s. An important feature of the game is that players can move and reuse the tiles that have already been placed on the table. Variations of the game contain four jokers. In the Sabra version (the most common and popular), the first player to use all their tiles scores a positive score based on the total of the other players' hands, while the losers get negative scores. Players have 14 or 16 tiles initially and take turns putting down tiles from their racks into sets (groups or runs) of at least three, drawing a tile if they cannot play. There are 106 tiles in the game, including 104 numbered tiles (valued 1 to 13 in four different colors, two copies of each) and two jokers.
Rummikub ( / ˈ r ʌ m i k j uː b/, 'rummy cube' ) is a tile-based game for 2 to 4 players, combining elements of the card game rummy and mahjong.
Tile-based game for two to four players A selection of Rummikub tiles and racks
