The deal and placing the pennies or chips.

At the start of each round or deal, each player must place nine chips or pennies on the board - one on each of the labelled spaces: king of hearts, ace of hearts, queen of hearts, ten of hearts, jack of hearts, king-queen of hearts, 8-9-10, the pot and the kitty spaces. There may be chips or pennies already in these spaces. This is because they were not able to be picked up on previous rounds; in this case the new chips or pennies are added to these. (making these pots bigger)

The dealer then deals out the cards one at a time, clockwise, to form one hand for each player plus a spare hand. The spare hand does not belong to anyone. Players will be able to bid on the spare hand if not taken by the dealer. Some of players will have one more card than others.

If as dealer you do not like your hand you can exchange it for the spare hand. You are not allowed to look at the spare hand before deciding whether to swap. If you do swap, your whole original hand is discarded face down and becomes the spare (you cannot combine cards from the two hands).

Alternatively, the dealer can offer the spare hand unseen for sale to the highest bidder. The person (if any) who buys the spare hand discards their own original hand face down and pays the dealer in chips the amount bid for the spare hand; if you auction the spare hand and no one wants to buy, you still have the option to swap your hand for the unseen kitty. Another possibility is to exchange your hand for the spare and then auction your old hand to the highest bidder. What you cannot do is exchange your hand for the spare and then exchange back - once you look at the spare hand you have to keep it.

Players will keep the same cards for all three stages of the game - there is no new deal before the second and third stages.

First stage - collecting stakes for pay cards

Anyone who holds the ace, king, queen, jack or ten of hearts takes all the chips from that space.

If a player has the king and queen of hearts, that player takes the chips from the king-queen space, in addition to the chips from the king and queen spaces.

The chips in the 8-9-10 space can be taken by a player who has an 8-9-10 sequence in one suit (for example spade8-spade9-spade10). The 8, 9 and 10 must all be in the same suit, but the suit does not have to be hearts. If two or more players have 8-9-10 in different suits they share the chips in the 8-9-10 space equally, leaving any remainder on the layout for the next winner.

Usually the chips in some of the spaces are unclaimed - these are left on the layout to be won in a future hand. Since more chips are added to each space at the start of each hand, the king-queen and 8-9-10 spaces, which are less often claimed, tend to produce higher winnings when someone does have the right cards.

Second Stage - Poker

Before the stops play begins, there is a round of poker. Everyone selects five cards from their hand that they wish to play poker with, separates them from the rest of their hand, and temporarily puts the other cards aside. You do not necessarily have to select the cards that form your best poker hand (you may have cards that you do not want to reveal until the stops part of the game, especially if you play the variation where stakes are collected from the layout in stage three rather than stage one). If you are not familiar with poker combinations, see the ranking of poker hands page for details.

All poker bets are placed in the pot space of the layout. The player to dealer's left begins the betting, and can either bet (putting an additional chip or chips in the pot) or check. If the first player checks, the next player can bet or check, and so on clockwise around the table. If everyone checks, all the poker hands are exposed and the player with the highest hand takes the pot.

If a player bets, it is no longer possible for subsequent players to check. After a bet, players have three options:

Pass or fold - they drop out of the betting and can no longer win the pot. Any chips they have already placed in the pot will go to the winner.
Call or see - the player puts into the pot enough chips so that the total amount of chips they have placed in the pot is equal to the total number put in by the last player who bet or raised.
Raise - the player puts in the number of chips that would be needed to call, plus some additional chips.
The betting continues clockwise around the table for as many rounds as necessary until one of two things happens:

All the players except one have folded. The sole remaining player takes all the chips in the pot. In this case none of the players' cards are exposed - it does not matter who actually had the best hand.
All the players who have not folded have put in equal stakes. This will happen when after a bet or raise, all the other players either fold or call. In this case there is a showdown between these players - they expose their hands and the highest wins all the chips in the pot. The players who have folded do not expose their cards - they cannot win the pot even if their hands were actually better than those taking part in the showdown.
Note that after you have passed / folded, you cannot take any further part in the betting.

If in the showdown, two or more players have equal hands, the pot is split equally between them. Any remainder of chips is carried over for the next deal.

It is usual to agree, before the start of the game, a limit for bets and raises in the poker stage. For example, if you agree a limit of 10, no one is allowed make an initial bet of more than 10, or to raise the bet by more than 10 chips in addition to the number needed to call the previous bet or raise.

Third Stage - Michigan Rummy

All players pick up their cards, putting their poker cards back together with the remainder of their hand, and play a game of Michigan. The winner of the pot in the poker stage begins the play by leading a card face up in front of them. If there was a tie for the pot, the first of the winners in clockwise order starting to the left of the dealer will begin. The card led can be of any suit, at the player's choice, but must be the lowest card that they hold in that suit (it need not be the absolute lowest card in their hand - they might have a lower card in another suit).

The player who holds the next higher card of the led suit must play it, placing it face up on the table in front of them. Then the player with the next higher card of the suit must play that, and so on until either the ace is reached or no one can play because no one holds the next higher card of the suit. A card on which no one can play is called a stop card; this can happen because the next higher card of the suit is in the spare hand, or because it has been played previously.

When the end of the sequence is reached, the player who played the ace or stop card begins again. They can lead any suit except the suit just played, and they must play the lowest card they hold in the suit they choose. The player with the next higher card of the suit led plays it, and so on until another stop is reached.

The play continues like this until someone runs out of cards, at which point the play ends immediately. The player who played all their cards wins all the chips in the "kitty" space on the layout, and in addition wins from each other player a number of chips equal to the number of cards they had left in their hands.

If a player who has just played an ace or stop cannot lead again, because all their remaining cards are in the same suit that was just played, then the turn to play passes to their left hand opponent. If that player also has nothing but the suit just played, the turn to start passes around the table until a player is reached who has some other suit to lead. If no one has any other suit the play ends, and everyone puts into the kitty a chip for each card they have left in their hands. These chips stay on the layout to be won by the winner of stage three of the next deal.

NOTE: These rules that the family and I play with were provided by:

https://www.pagat.com/stops/3in1.html

The pictures where taken by me.