While most people know how to play rummikub, only some are aware of rummikub game history. It is very interesting to know how this game first appeared and how it evolved to the huge success it is today. Contrary to what you might believe, this is not a game that first appeared hundreds of years ago, like rummy. Rummikub was invented by a Romanian around the 1940s. The inventor’s name was Ephraim Hertzano and he is the one person that is really responsible for the creation of this hit family game.

Rummikub was basically invented in order to counter the fact that card games were illegal. Ephraim had a great idea to replace all cards with tiles and to make them of different colors. He knew that the rules of the game would have to be really similar to those of card games in order to be successful and the model was taken from ancient rummy games.

Ephraim Hertzano had to go through a lot of problems when he began manufacturing rummikub games. The biggest one was that his financial power was not big enough to use either plastic or wood for tiles. The great move appeared when he went to a manufacturing shop that was using recycled materials. That was where he found the perfect material to create rummikub tiles. The second big problem was the fact that people had to be convinced to play. This was basically done by word of mouth and Ephraim chose to invite people over to his house in order to play a game and see how it was like. This tradition continued even when he moved with his family to Israel, only to continue selling rummikub sets and working hard to increase its popularity.

Ephraim believed in his dream of making rummikub the most popular game in the world and he was really close to achieving that, especially now that people play online rummikub from everywhere in the world. This is one game that has won a lot of prizes as Game of the Year in different countries around the world. Also, the game was picked up by online casinos and online rummy rooms, thus increasing its popularity even higher. It is estimated that over 50 million game sets have been sold so far and this ranges across 5 continents with game rules being translated in over 40 languages. Nowadays his legacy continues through all the people that are playing the game he invented.