4.0 KiB
Canasta — Sit With Us, We Play in Pairs
By Aunt Rosa — who has hosted the Sunday card table for fifty years and never once lost her own deal
Come in, come in — wipe your feet and sit across from me. No, not beside — across. In Canasta we play in partnerships, and you and I are a team. The two across the table from us? Lovely people. The enemy. We'll be polite and we'll beat them.
The Goal
First team to 5,000 points wins the match — not in one hand, but over several. You score by laying down melds and, above all, by building canastas. Help me build ours and we'll be drinking the good coffee by evening.
The Cards
We play with two whole decks plus four jokers — 108 cards. You start with eleven in your hand. Some cards are special:
- Wild cards — the jokers (worth 50) and every two (worth 20). A wild can stand in for almost any card in a meld.
- Red threes — pure bonus. The moment one lands in your hand it pops onto the table by itself and you draw a replacement. Each is worth 100 (all four together, a glorious 800) — but only if our team has melded. Sit there doing nothing and they count against us.
- Black threes — stubborn little things. You can't meld them, and tossing one onto the discard pile slams the door so the next player can't grab it.
Your Turn, Step by Step
1. Draw
Either take the top card of the stock, or scoop up the entire discard pile — pile-taking is how fortunes are made. But you may only take the pile if you can use its top card right away:
- Hold two natural cards matching it and you may always take it.
- If the pile isn't frozen and we've already melded, one natural plus a wild will do, or you can add the top card to a meld we already have.
A frozen pile (someone discarded a wild onto it — you'll see the ❄ badge) demands two natural matches, no shortcuts. And remember: before our team's first meld, you must use two naturals regardless.
2. Meld
A meld is three or more cards of the same rank laid on the table — and melds belong to the team, so I can build on yours and you on mine. A meld may carry up to three wild cards, but never more wilds than naturals.
Our first meld of the game must reach a minimum point total that climbs as our score grows — 50 to start, then 90, then 120. The game will tell you the number; just select cards and press Meld.
3. Discard
End your turn by tossing one card onto the discard pile. Select a single card and press Discard. (Throw a wild and you freeze the pile — sometimes exactly what you want.)
Canastas — the Whole Point
A canasta is a meld of seven cards.
- Natural canasta — seven cards, no wilds. A beauty. 500 points.
- Mixed canasta — seven cards with a wild or two. Still grand. 300 points.
You'll see ours glow gold (natural) or silver (mixed) in the meld area.
Going Out
To end the hand, a player empties their hand — but only if our team owns at least one canasta. Going out earns a 100 bonus (200 if you do it all in one breathtaking turn having never melded before). When the hand ends we tally melds, canastas, red threes and the go-out bonus, then subtract the value of every card still stuck in our hands. So don't get caught holding a fistful at the end.
Rosa's Rules of the Heart
- Hoard for a canasta. A meld of four is nice; a canasta is a fortune. Don't break up a near-canasta to start something new.
- Watch what they want. If the pile is fat, the player after you may be drooling for it — drop a black three and shut them out.
- Mind the freeze. Frozen piles are heavy and hard to take; freeze it when we're sitting pretty and they aren't.
- Red threes love a melded team. Get a meld down early so our bonus cards count for us.
That's the whole song, dear. Watch the table, trust your partner, and build, build, build. Now — your draw. And do try to look like you know what you're doing; they're watching.