How to Play Okey: Rules, Dealing Tiles and the Indicator

Okey is a tile game for four players. The set holds 106 tiles: numbers 1 to 13 in four colours (red, yellow, black, blue), two of each, plus 2 false jokers.

Tiles are shuffled face down and stacked in rows of five in front of each player. The dealer takes 15 tiles; the other three take 14 each.

The aim is to arrange every tile in your hand into sets and runs. On your turn you draw one tile and discard one, so your hand stays at 14 throughout.

After dealing, one tile is turned face up from the stacks: that's the indicator. The joker is derived from it — the tile one number higher in the same colour becomes that hand's okey.

Example: if the indicator is yellow 5, then yellow 6 is the joker for that hand. If the indicator is a 13, the count wraps and the joker is the 1 of that colour.

The okey tile works as a wild: it can stand in for any tile you need. The two false jokers in the set take the place of that hand's real okey tile.

To go out, every tile in your hand has to belong to a valid group. There are two kinds.

A set: three or four tiles of the same number in different colours — red 7, black 7, blue 7.

A run: at least three consecutive tiles in one colour — yellow 4, yellow 5, yellow 6. The 1 can sit either above the 13 or below the 2, but not both at once.

The player going out discards their final tile face down and reveals their hand. Discarding face down is how you announce it.

Going out while holding the okey doubles the score. There's also going out on the okey — discarding it as your last tile — which raises the score again. Tables agree these multipliers before play.

If the stacks run out before anyone goes out, the hand is a draw and gets redealt.

Scoring varies by table, but the common arrangement is that everyone starts each hand level and the player who goes out collects from the others.

Double jokers, going out on the indicator and finishing in a single colour all produce multipliers. Agree all of them before the first hand — this is the part that differs most between tables.

What makes Okey work is the speed of the turn and the fact that the table can play and talk at the same time — at an okey table the conversation matters as much as the game.

That conversational floor doesn't need tiles: a question deck on a phone also passes round and needs no setup. They aren't the same game — one runs on arrangement and luck, the other produces the conversation directly. But after a long session a table often wants to keep talking rather than break up. The Gossip Pot is built for rounds where a group talks about each other; Best Liar Wins suits people who like bluffing.