Canasta

Also known as Classic Canasta

Players

2-4 players (best with 4)

Deck

2 standard decks plus 4 jokers (108 cards)

Time

60-120 minutes

Difficulty

Complex

Category

Rummy family

Setup

Four players, paired off across the table and staying paired all game. Shuffle two full 52-card decks together with four jokers: 108 cards. Cut for seats and first deal if you want a formal start, high card choosing; after that the deal passes clockwise each hand.

Deal 11 cards to each player, one at a time. Set the remaining cards face down in the middle as the stock and turn its top card face up beside it to begin the discard pile. If that upcard is a joker, a two, or a red three, turn another card on top of it and keep going until an ordinary card is showing. When that happens the pile starts the hand frozen; leave the wild card or red three sticking out crossways so everyone can see it stays frozen.

Before the first turn, every player puts any red threes from their dealt hand face up on the table in front of them and draws one replacement card from the stock for each, repeating if a replacement is itself a red three. The player to the dealer's left plays first.

Melds belong to the partnership, not the player, so keep them all in one group in front of one partner where both of you can reach them. Score is kept per partnership across as many deals as the game takes.

Play

Play goes clockwise, and a turn has three parts: take cards, meld if you want to, then throw one card onto the discard pile to close it. Melding is optional; taking and discarding are not.

Taking cards. Either draw the top card of the stock, or take the whole discard pile when you are entitled to. If you ever draw a red three, lay it down face up at once and draw another card to replace it.

Melds. A meld is a rank collected three deep or more, anything from a four up to an ace, with suits playing no part. Jokers and twos are wild and may be included, but a meld must always hold at least two natural cards and may never hold more than three wild cards. There are no sequences in Canasta. Your side may have only one meld of any given rank, so instead of starting a second you add to the one already on the table; either partner may add to any of the side's melds at any time. Cards on the table stay there and cannot be taken back into hand.

Threes. Red threes are never melded or held in hand; they sit face up in front of you doing nothing but scoring. Black threes may be melded only on the turn you go out, and only as a natural set of three or four with no wild card among them.

The first meld. Neither partner may put anything down until the side lays out melds whose card points reach a minimum set by their score at the start of the deal: 15 points if the score is below zero, 50 from 0 to 1,495, 90 from 1,500 to 2,995, and 120 at 3,000 or above. The whole requirement must be satisfied in one turn, and only the face value of the cards counts toward it. Red threes, canasta bonuses, and the going-out bonus do not help. If you make the initial meld while taking the discard pile, the top card counts but the buried cards do not.

Taking the discard pile. You must use the top card immediately in a meld, and you always take the entire pile, never part of it. If the pile is not frozen against you there are two ways in: meld the top card with two cards of that rank out of your hand, either two natural cards or one natural card plus a wild card, or add the top card to a meld your side already has on the table. If the pile is frozen against you the second route is closed and a wild card is no help in the first: you need two natural cards of the top card's rank in your hand, and you meld all three together. The pile is frozen for everyone once a wild card or red three lies buried in it, it is frozen against any side that has not yet made its initial meld, and it starts frozen if the first upcard was a wild card or red three. A frozen pile stays frozen until somebody takes it.

Black threes. A black three thrown on the pile puts it out of reach of the player who follows, whatever they hold; the block lifts after that one turn and does not freeze the pile.

Canastas. Seven cards of one rank, or more, makes a canasta. Square it up and mark it with a red card on top if it is natural (no wilds) or a black card if it is mixed. You may keep adding cards afterwards, but laying a wild card on a natural canasta turns it into a mixed one.

Going out. You go out when you play the last card from your hand, whether as a discard, a new meld, or an addition to an existing one; finishing with a meld and no discard is allowed. Your side must have completed at least one canasta first. Before you touch anything on your turn you are allowed one question across the table — "may I go out?" — and whichever answer comes back binds you. Once you have melded or reached for the pile, you have given up the right to ask.

If your side has not melded yet and you draw from the stock into a hand you can lay down complete, canasta included, you may go out concealed on the spot without meeting the minimum count. Take the pile instead of drawing and that concession disappears: you must make the minimum, and the concealed bonus is not yours to claim.

When the stock runs out. If the last stock card is a red three, the player shows it and the hand ends immediately with no discard. Otherwise play carries on with no stock to draw from, so the discard pile is the only source of cards. Taking it is now compulsory rather than optional: if the top card can be added to one of your side's melds and the pile is not frozen against you, you must take the pile, meld, and discard as usual. You may still take it by the ordinary two-cards-from-hand route if that is open to you, but only the add-to-a-meld case is forced. The moment a player has no legal way to take the pile, the hand stops there: nobody goes out, no going-out bonus is scored, and the deal is counted as it stands.

Goal & scoring

The partnership target is 5,000 points, played out over as many deals as it takes. Each deal is scored for the side as a whole.

Every card carries a point value fixed by its rank, wild cards counting for most and the low cards for least. Add up everything your side has melded and subtract the value of every card still in either partner's hand.

Bonuses: 500 for each natural canasta, 300 for each mixed canasta, and 100 for going out. Going out concealed is worth 200 instead: you lay your whole hand down in one turn, canasta included, having put nothing on the table earlier in the deal, neither a meld of your own nor an addition to your partner's. Your partner may already have melds down; some rule sets are stricter and require the whole side to have stayed off the table.

Red threes count 100 each for the side that laid them down, but only if that side made its initial meld; a side that never melded has the same 100 per red three deducted. Holding all four doubles it to 800 for or 800 against.

A deal can easily come out negative. Add each deal to the running total, since that total sets the next deal's minimum meld. The game ends when a side reaches 5,000 or more once a deal has been fully scored; if both sides cross 5,000 in the same deal, the higher total wins, and if the two totals are level as well, play one more deal to break the tie.

Variants

Two- and three-player Canasta — With two players, each is dealt 15 cards, a stock draw takes two cards rather than one (you still discard only one), everyone plays alone, and you need two canastas to go out. With three, deal 13 cards each and again play as individuals with the standard one-canasta requirement. Everything else follows the four-hand game.

Samba — Three decks and six jokers, 162 cards, usually four players in two partnerships, dealt 15 each. Alongside ordinary rank melds you may build sequences in a single suit running anywhere from the four up to the ace; a sequence of seven is a samba, counts as a canasta for going out, and scores 1,500. Sequences never accept wild cards, and ordinary melds are held to two wild cards rather than three. Stock draws take two cards, going out needs two canastas, and the game runs to 10,000 with the initial meld minimum climbing to 150 once a side passes 7,000.

Hand and Foot — The most popular North American descendant, usually four to six decks with jokers. Each player gets two packets of equal size, most often eleven cards each though thirteen is just as widely played; you play the hand first and only pick up the foot after emptying it. Melds are built toward books of seven, clean (no wilds) or dirty (with wilds), and going out typically demands a set quota of each, so a partnership cannot finish early on a thin table.

Modern American Canasta — The version most tournament and club play now uses. Nothing from the discard pile may go towards the opening meld — it comes out of the hand and nowhere else — and a partnership needs two canastas rather than one before it may go out. Wild cards may be gathered into a meld of their own: a canasta of seven wild cards pays a bonus far larger than a natural one, most published rule sets putting it at 1,000, and an unfinished pile of wilds is penalised at the end of the deal instead. A rank whose remaining copies are all buried or already melded elsewhere can no longer reach seven cards and is treated as dead, which changes what is safe to throw. League rule sets differ on the exact bonus figures, so check whose rules the table is using.

• classic
• counting
• long-game
• partnership
• strategy

Rules checked against Pagat, Bicycle Cards, Wikipedia, Britannica, Hoyle's Rules of Games, Canasta League of America, GameRules.com.