Two Plus Two Newer Archives - Gin rummy books?

I play Gin quite a bit and before I discovered poker this was my favorite card game. I too looked for books on gin, but found that the ones I did find were pretty basic and offered little in terms of advancing my play or thought process about the game. I wouldn't expect to find a book that treats gin the way TOP treats poker. I just don't think that gin is that complicated. I'm interested to hear if others think differently.

The main skill you'll need to develop is memorizing, or keeping track of, the cards that your opponent picks up and/or discards. For example, if your opponent dumped two red queens, but picked up the queen of clubs, you can safely assume he's completed a run or going for one. Another example would be if you have 6h 7h, needing the 5h or 8h for a meld, and you've seen your opponent pick up two fives. Chances are your 5h is dead and killing the low end of your run. Pretty simple stuff, mostly deductive reasoning and intuition. I think once you develop this skill you can read your opponent's hand quite easily and make the appropriate plays.

You should also "count outs" when playing. Going back to the above example the 5h and 8h are outs. But let's say you also have an 8c in your hand giving you two to a run and two to a meld of 8 for a total of 4 outs. Picking up the 7c to match your 8c will give you another two to a run and more outs (6c 9c). So in other words, look to add outs and collect cards that are coordinated, which gives you more ways to put melds together. However, you should always opt to finish melds, rather than create more for the sake of adding outs.

You also want to put melds together quickly and knock early if you think your opponent hasn't put much together.

Those skills, thorough understanding of the rules (and variations), and lots of playing time is all you really need. As far a Stu Ungar, I have no idea what made him so good at gin. I would guess that he had excellent recall and could read his opponent's hands very well.

I hope this spurs some discussion, I'd like to read what others think.