-
Play Now
How To Play Canasta
To learn how to play Canasta, it’s helpful if you’re familiar with other Rummy games. It’s best played with 4 people, but can also be played with 2 to 6 people. The game uses 2 decks with 4 Jokers. The 2’s and Jokers function as wild cards. The 3’s are considered special. With 4 players, each receives 11 cards, with the rest placed in a stock pile, facing downward. The dealer overturns the first card to start the discard pile. The objective of the game is to amass points by melding and going out more quickly than other players.
Each turn during a round begins with drawing a card from the stock or discard pile. Then, the player either melds (forms valid groups) or discards, signaling the end of his turn. Drawing from the discard pile works differently in Canasta than other Rummy games. A player can only draw if he’s able to use the card for a meld. Then, he must play the meld during that turn. Plus, if he chooses to take the top card from the discard pile, he must take the entire pile.
The discard pile can also be “frozen” under a few circumstances. For example, if it contains a wild card, it is frozen against every player. If, while playing in teams, a team has not melded, the discard pile is frozen against that team. Finally, if a red 3 is the first card in the discard pile (turned over by the dealer at the beginning of the round), the pile is frozen to all players.
The round ends when a player goes out after having melded at least one Canasta (a group of 7 cards). Unlike traditional Rummy games, melds cannot be sets of consecutive cards. They must be groups of same-ranked cards. A player can go out by melding his entire hand or by melding all of his cards but 1, which is then discarded.
If a player has not melded a valid Canasta, he cannot go out. Also, when playing with partners, it’s important to remember that going out will leave your partner with cards in his hand. As such, going out may not always be a well-timed event. After each round, scoring is done according to a complex schedule. Points are counted for played melds from which points for held cards are subtracted.
Rummy Royal hosts Rummy games and tournaments, so check it out!
To learn how to play more games, check out the following pages:
-
Play Rummy Online
