It's nice. It reminds me of the "square root" hack for Gin Rummy, from the guy who came up with the card game Ambition.

Square-root hack is as follows: regular rounds are scored on the square root (rounding down) of the deadwood difference, capped at 5 points. Undercuts get a bonus of 3, plus the square root of the differential. Gin scores 4 plus the square root of the opponent's deadwood. So the ranges are:

Regular: 1-5 Undercut: 3-6 Gin: 5-13

The victory condition is to have win a round when you have at least 20 points, and you are in the lead.

Second-turn Gin is extremely rare, but first- or second-turn knock is not rare. With the regular system, a second-turn knock (pure luck) can be a 60+ round, and that's more than half the game. With this system, it's only 5 points.