CoolhandThe games · Coolhand Cards
Canasta
The partnership rummy from Uruguay. Build melds of one rank with your partner, grow them into canastas, and take the whole pile when you can use its top card.
- Players
- 4
- Family
- Rummy
- App
- Coolhand Cards · iOS and Android, soon
How it goes
Partners sit opposite and share their melds. Two decks are used, with twos and jokers wild. Each turn, take the top card of the stock, or the whole pile if you can meld its top card at once, then meld if you like and throw one card. A meld is three or more of one rank, never a run, with at least two natural cards and at most three wild. Each side keeps one meld per rank. Seven or more cards make a canasta: five hundred with no wild card, three hundred with any. A side needs one to go out, by melding or throwing its last card. Once the stock is gone, you must take the pile if it isn't frozen and its top card joins one of your side's melds; otherwise the hand ends as soon as a player leaves the pile or can't take it. Melded cards and bonuses score, minus the cards left in both partners' hands. The first side to five thousand wins. Card values are jokers fifty, aces and twos twenty, kings to eights ten, and sevens to fours and black threes five. Your side's first meld counts only the cards you meld that turn, with the pile's top card if you took it but never the rest of the pile, and its minimum rises with your score: fifteen below zero, fifty from zero, ninety from fifteen hundred, a hundred and twenty from three thousand. Until your side has melded, the pile is frozen for you. A frozen pile needs two natural cards of the top card's rank from your hand. Any wild card, or a red three turned up to start it, freezes the pile for everyone. An unfrozen pile can be taken when its top card joins a natural pair, a natural and a wild card, or a meld of yours. A thrown black three stops the next player taking the pile. If your side has not melded and you drew from the stock, you may lay your whole hand down at once, a canasta among it, and go out concealed with no minimum. Going out scores a hundred, or two hundred concealed: nothing of yours on the table before that turn, nothing added to your partner's melds, and a canasta of your own. Black threes meld only when you go out. Red threes go face up at once, replaced from the stock, and one drawn as the stock's last card ends play: a hundred each, eight hundred for all four, but counted against a side that never melds.
A good hand
Getting your side's first meld down early, since until then the pile is frozen for you. Going out concealed scores two hundred instead of a hundred.
The usual mistake
Throwing a card the other side can meld while the pile is open to them, which hands them all of it. A thrown black three stops the next player taking the pile, and a thrown wild card freezes it.
Played differently where you are?
Card games change from table to table, and we researched some of these games instead of playing them. If Canasta goes differently where you play it, tell us. That's one of the things the closed beta is for.
The closed beta is by invitation. How to ask to join.