Canasta
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Interest Group leader: Maureen Ferguson
Meeting information: Meets at 10.00-12.00 every other Friday
Meeting venue: Hillingdon.
Canasta is an uncomplicated card game for singles, partners or for 6 persons. The game is similar to rummy where you collect numbered cards. Canasta is an easy game to learn with just enough rules and strategies to make it challenging but not too demanding.
If you are interested, contact Maureen to arrange to come along and try, tuition will be given.
Here are the specific rules that we play with.
Canasta requires 2 complete decks of cards plus 4 Jokers making 108 cards in all.
Jokers and Two’s are wild cards and can be used to represent any other card in the deck.
The cards have the following points value.
Jokers 50
Two’s and Aces 20
Kings to Eights 10
Seven to Fours and Black Threes 5
Red Threes 100
Canasta can be played by 2-4 players
2 and 3 players – each plays for himself. 13 cards dealt
4 play as teams. 11 cards dealt
Two people playing together can add to each others cards on the table.
If dealt a Red Three it is placed on the table and another card is taken from the pack.
The aim of the game is to make a canasta, which consists of 7 cards of which 4 must be natural cards (eg all 10’s)
A canasta made up with 1-3 wild cards is worth 300 points
A natural canasta is worth 500 points.
Each player takes a card from the pack and then discards one from his hand.
If the top card of the discard pack helps to make a meld (3 cards or more) he takes all the cards in the discard pack
The first meld to be put down on the table has to add up to 50 points,
When the score reaches 1500, then the first meld on the table has to add up to 90 points till the score reaches 3000, then 120 points is needed in the first meld.
The game finishes when the first person or team reach 5000