Canasta Unmasked: Putting a New Face on an Old Game

Basic Rule Outline and In-depth Strategy Make Canasta Play Simple!

Canasta, like many of the old-fashioned card games, is often daunting at first glance, lost among our memories from childhood of grandmothers and their friends sitting around playing cards over tea. Despite how it might look, Canasta is a deceptively simple game to learn to play; the challenge of it doesn’t lie in remembering or following the rules, but in applying a foolproof strategy that will turn this simple game in your favor. Since you can’t play without the rules, though, here they are:

Canasta is a game that’s all about melding (a meld is three or more of the same card), so basically, that’s what you should be striving for—getting lots of the same card. To be technical, you’re going to want to get 7 of the same card (called a Canasta); that’s what it’ll take before you can meld out (lay down all of your cards) and score big. I promise, it sounds more complicated than it is.

Each turn consists of three parts: drawing, melding, and the discard. The drawing phase always happens on every turn, thought the other two phases may or may not. At the beginning of your turn, you can choose to pick up two cards from the face-down pile or the cards in the face-up discard pile (however many that may be). If you haven’t yet made your initial meld, then you can only pick up the cards from the discard pile if you can make a meld with the card and you have enough points to make your initial meld (dependent on how many hands you’ve won so far); you can always draw two from the pile as long as there are some left; if there aren’t, the game is over, so you wouldn’t have to worry about drawing at all. If you’ve made your meld, you can pick up the discard pile as long as you can meld the top card.