What is Canasta?

Canasta, it is a card game that is part of the Rummy family. The object of Canasta is to make melds, sets of three or more cards of the same rank (i.e. three 4's), and complete books (also called Canastas), consisting of a minimum of seven cards of the same rank. Although there are many variations of the game, each with their own scoring, rules and number of decks of cards used, the basic object of the game remains the same.

The purpose of this site is to provide rules for the group of card games know as Canasta.

The Games

Canasta vs. Rummy

Canasta is a card game that is part of the rummy family. However, there are a couple aspects of Canasta that make it unique. In Canasta, no matter which version is played, a player is required to make a certain number of canastas (7-card melds) before they are allowed to go out. Another main difference is that when a player wishes to pick up the top card of a discard pile, they must take the entire stack. Due to these reasons the game play strategy tends to differ in Canasta. In Rummy, it is more advantageous to keep the cards in your hand to a minimum and go out quickly. However, in Canasta keeping a bunch of cards in your hand and taking time to build up canastas can be very advantageous.

There are many other sites out there that provide rules for cards games, but few sites are dedicated to Canasta. Due to the large number of varieties of Canasta, this can make finding or comparing rules difficult. For this reason, I thought having one site with all the different variations would be useful. Also, I am interested in adding the Hand and Foot rules used by my family and friends, as they are different from the other rules I have been able to find online.