Vatikan is played with two decks of cards and one joker per player, thus making 106 cards for two players. Rummikub is similar to several central European card games which are played with two decks of playing cards, including Machiavelli and Vatikan.

The game was first made by Lemada Light Industries Ltd, founded by Hertzano in 1978. Modern Rummikub sets include only the Sabra version rules, with no mention of the others, and there are variations in the rules between publishers.

Hertzano's Official Rummikub Book, published in 1978, describes three different versions of the game: American, Sabra, and International. The game was marketed as 'Rummikid' during part of the 1970s. Arline translated the rules from Hebrew to English and by 1977, it became a bestselling game in the United States. In the 1970s it was brought to the United States by Irv and Arline Kossoff to sell in their New York’s Gift, Games, and Luggage store. Over the years, the family licensed it to other countries and it became Israel's best-selling export game. Hertzano sold these sets door-to-door and on a consignment basis at small shops. He hand-made the first sets with his family in the backyard of his home. Rummikub was invented by Ephraim Hertzano, a Romanian-born Jew, who emigrated to Modern day Israel in the 1940s. An important feature of the game is that players can move and reuse the tiles that have already been placed on the table. Variations of the game contain four jokers. In the Sabra version (the most common and popular), the first player to use all their tiles scores a positive score based on the total of the other players' hands, while the losers get negative scores. Players have 14 or 16 tiles initially and take turns putting down tiles from their racks into sets (groups or runs) of at least three, drawing a tile if they cannot play. There are 106 tiles in the game, including 104 numbered tiles (valued 1 to 13 in four different colors, two copies of each) and two jokers. Rummikub ( / ˈ r ʌ m i k j uː b/, 'rummy cube' ) is a tile-based game for 2 to 4 players, combining elements of the card game rummy and mahjong. Tile-based game for two to four players A selection of Rummikub tiles and racks

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