Viewed through the lens of game theory and human decision-making, Okrummy, Rummy, and Aviator trace a revealing spectrum between skill and chance, tradition and platformization, compositional planning and reflexive risk. Though they share a common ground in uncertainty and reward design, each frames the player’s attention differently: the meld-making choreography of Rummy, the digital orchestration and governance of Okrummy, and the kinetic, crash-style tension of Aviator. Together they illustrate how mechanics, incentives, and interfaces mold play and shape outcomes.

Rummy, a classic family of card games, is at heart a problem of combinatorial optimization under partial information. Players seek to form sets and runs while minimizing unmelded “deadwood,” navigating a draw-discard loop where every card is both resource and signal. The skill component emerges from memory (tracking seen and inferred cards), inference (opponent intentions suggested by pickups and discards), and temporal planning (sequencing melds and holds to maximize optionality). The state space is rich: each draw updates beliefs