101 okey rules explained

101 is okey scored as a match instead of a single hand: the opening threshold is fixed at 101 points and never moves, the deal is 22 and 21 tiles, and the player with the lowest total at the end wins. Everything underneath that is the okey you already know — draw one tile, throw one away, and finish the hand when every tile in front of you sits in a run or a set. What makes 101 its own rule set is that the hand you are playing is never the whole game: the result goes into a running tally and is carried into the next one. In Kaptirik it lives in the same app as classic okey and 51, so you can move between the three without going looking for another game.

What 101 leaves alone

The basic shape of a hand is untouched, which is why 101 is readable to anyone who has played okey once. A turn is one tile drawn and one tile discarded, so a hand is the same size at the end of your turn as it was at the start. The tile you draw comes either from the pile in the middle or from what the player on your left has just thrown away. A run is three or more tiles of one colour in consecutive numbers; a set is the same number held in different colours. The hand ends when one player has their whole hand arranged into runs and sets and discards the last tile. What 101 adds sits on top of all that: when you are allowed to open, how many tiles you start with, and the fact that the hand you just played follows you into the next one.

• The opening threshold is fixed at 101 points and stays at 101 for the whole match.
• The deal is 22 and 21 tiles, so one hand at the table starts a tile ahead of the others.
• The score runs across several hands instead of being settled and forgotten at the end of each one.
• The lowest total wins, so the match rewards keeping your number down rather than winning one hand outright.

A threshold that stays where it is

The number in the name is the price of getting anything onto the table. Until what you are laying down is worth at least 101 points, your groups stay in your hand where nobody can see them. The part worth paying attention to is not the size of that number but the fact that it is fixed and stays there for the whole match. In 51 the bar climbs with every player who opens after you, so what you have to be worth is decided partly by the people sitting around you. In 101 it is decided before the first tile is drawn. That makes it the most plannable of the three rule sets: the target you are working towards at the end of a hand is the target you had at the start, and a player who opens ahead of you costs you tempo rather than raising your price. The pressure in 101 comes off the score sheet, not off the other three players' openings.

22 and 21 tiles

The deal is 22 and 21, which means one hand at the table begins with a tile the other three do not have. Because a turn puts a hand back to the size it started at, that one-tile difference does not quietly even out during play — it is where the hand begins and it belongs to somebody. A 101-point opening is a lot to assemble, and the larger deal is what makes assembling it realistic: more tiles means more raw material for groups worth that much before anybody finishes. It also means more to hold and more to keep sorted. If you come to 101 straight from classic okey, the first thing that feels different is not the threshold at all — it is how much is in front of you when the hand starts, and how much of it is still uncommitted five turns later.

The score follows you into the next hand

In a single hand of okey the result is the whole game: somebody finishes and the table starts again from nothing. 101 does not work that way. It is a longer match played across multiple hands with a running score, so a hand is a line in a tally rather than a game in its own right. That changes the unit you are trying to be good at, and it works in both directions — one brilliant hand followed by four careless ones is a game 101 does not reward, and a hand that goes badly is one entry among several rather than the end of anything.

The lowest total wins

101 counts downwards. When the match is over the winner is whoever holds the lowest total, which inverts the instinct most games train into you — you are not chasing a big number, you are trying to keep yours small. Across a whole match that turns steadiness into the winning quality: a player who never has a disastrous hand is in better shape than one whose good hands are spectacular and whose bad ones are worse. It also makes the closing hands feel different from the opening ones, because by then the running score says where everybody stands.

101 next to the other two rule sets

The rules at a glance

Learning a long game without holding up three other people

A match that runs over several hands asks for an evening rather than ten minutes, which is a good reason to work the rules out on your own first. The offline mode against bots needs no internet connection, and nobody is waiting on you while you count whether your groups are worth 101 yet. Once the opening makes sense, quick match seats you at a four-player online table; if you would rather choose the company, you can open a private room for friends. A table that does not fill is completed by bots, so a match never waits on a fourth player who is not coming. All three rule sets are in the same app, so the quickest way to feel what a fixed threshold does is to play the same kind of hand in classic okey, in 51 and in 101 — the screenshots of each mode are on the game page at /games/kaptirik/.

Where to get it

Kaptirik is free on Google Play and on the App Store, and the interface is in Turkish. Which version is live on each store, and the links to both listings, are on /games/kaptirik/.