There are specialty Canasta card decks at Amazon that make it easier to count points at the end of the game. You can play Canasta with standard playing cards. in the 1950s to 1980s.Ī: A Canasta game ends when the first player or team gets reaches 5000 points. Q: How many decks of cards are used in a Canasta game?Ī: Two decks of cards, including four jokers for a total of 108 cards.Ī: It’s popular right now with many card playing families around the world. One Canasta is the requirement for 3 player card games.Ī: Your meld are the cards you’ve laid in front of you. And if you’re not interested in that, you can have fun playing the game anyway, without implementing all the advanced nuances.Ī: Two Canastas are needed to go out for 2 or 4 player games (straights count towards your total). One great thing I love about playing Canasta is that there are more advanced strategies, so you can continually improve over time if you want to, no matter how long you’ve played. Although it can seem complex on the surface, it’s a fairly simple game to learn if you follow the steps below. The rules and strategies below are based off the game as it’s primarily played in the United States, with American Canasta Rules.Ĭanasta is a great strategy game that teaches you to think a few steps ahead. There are several variations of the game that we’ve run across over the years such as Brazilian, British, Italian, Cuba, Boat, and even one called Hand and Foot Canasta. It gets its name because in the card game, you try to get a basket-full (or 7) cards of the same rank in order to obtain points for a canasta. The word Canasta means “basket” in Spanish. It was invented in Uruguay in 1939 and first spread to South America before becoming popular in the United States in the 1950s. Canasta, the card game, is a variant of Rummy.

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