Canasta — House Rules

How we play it. These are house rules and differ from the standard game in a few places — the wild canasta especially.

The deal

Played head to head, three ways, or in partnerships, partners sitting across from each other. Three decks shuffled together with six jokers — cards in all. Each player is dealt .

Once everyone has their cards, the next one is turned face up to start the discard pile. If it is a wild or a red 3 the pile starts frozen and another card is turned on top.

When you cut, it is the part you leave behind that has to be right. Leave exactly the cards the deal needs and your side takes for a perfect deal. The card turned for the discard pile is forgiven, so dead exact and one spare both count — two spares if the first one froze the pile.

Your turn

Draw from the stock, meld whatever you want to meld, then discard one card to finish. Instead of drawing from the stock you can try to take the discard pile — see below for what that takes.

The stock running dry before anyone has gone out happens rarely enough that there is no standing rule for it. If it comes up, settle it at the table.

Melds and canastas

A meld is three or more cards of the same rank, laid face up in front of your side. Natural means any card that is not wild. Laying your side's first cards of a round on the table is going down; shedding the last card in your hand is going out. They are different things and the page uses both. Your side keeps one meld per rank and adds to it as you go.

A meld of seven cards is a canasta. It does not close there — keep adding and the extra cards count their card points, though the bonus stays what it is. What it pays depends on how clean it is:

The wild canasta is seven wild cards rather than seven of a rank. It is the big one, it is a house rule, and most canasta variants do not allow it at all. It counts as a canasta everywhere else too — toward the canastas you need to go out, and for keeping your red 3s on the right side of the ledger.

In partnerships every meld belongs to the side, not the player: either partner can add to any of them, and once one partner has gone down the side's minimum is satisfied for both. In practice one of you keeps the whole side's melds laid out in front of them rather than splitting them across the table. It makes no difference to the scoring, it is just easier to read.

Wild cards

Twos and Jokers are wild. A wild card stands in for any rank — three 9s and a wild is four 9s, and the wild counts as the fourth 9.

There is a limit on how hard you can lean on them. A meld must have more natural cards than wilds when you lay it down — two naturals will carry one wild, three naturals will carry two, and never the other way round. That is checked as the meld goes down; once it is on the table you can add to it freely.

The wild canasta sits outside that rule altogether: lay three or more wilds as a meld of their own and build it up over later turns. Short of seven it is not a canasta yet, but the wilds already down still count their card points like anything else you have melded.

They are the most double-edged cards in the deck:

• They are the dearest cards to be caught holding. A 2 is against you in hand, a Joker .
• Any canasta of a rank with a wild in it is dirty — instead of the a natural one pays. One wild is all it takes to cost you .
• But seven wilds together is a wild canasta: , the biggest single score on the board, and worth four natural canastas.

Discarding one freezes the pile. It is a dear card to throw away, but sometimes worth it to shut the pile down on someone who is circling it.

What the cards are worth

These are the card points you count up at the end of a round: everything you have melded on the table counts for you, everything still in your hand counts against you.

The 3s only ever count against you here, with one exception each — see Red 3s and Black 3s below. A red 3 laid down is a bonus card, not a card point.

Going down

Your side's opening laydown of a round has to be worth a minimum number of card points — everything you put down that turn counts toward it together. The minimum rises as your score does, and where your side sits right now decides what you need:

A side below zero needs the lowest minimum of all.

You can go down by taking the discard pile, and everything you lay from your hand counts toward the minimum — all of it, plus the top card of the pile. Add the lot together.

What will not help you get there is the rest of the pile. Those cards come into play only once your opening laydown is made; you cannot count them toward the minimum that let you take them.

Taking the discard pile

Two ways in, and either one gets you the whole pile. Both of them put the top card straight onto the table — you never take the pile and sit on it:

• Hold two natural cards matching the top card. Those two and the top card go down together as a meld, there and then. You cannot take the pile and keep them in your hand — if you are not melding them, you are not taking the pile.
• Or have a meld already down that the top card plays onto, and play it on. A booked canasta does not count for this: once a rank is booked it stops opening the pile, and only two naturals from your hand will take it after that.

Whatever is underneath the top card goes into your hand.

Two things stop you: a black 3 on top, which blocks the player immediately after it, and a frozen pile, which closes off the second route entirely. Both are below.

Freezing the pile

Discarding a wild card or a red 3 freezes the pile. While it is frozen there is only one way in — two naturals from your hand. Extending a meld you already have down will not get you a frozen pile.

It stays frozen until somebody takes it. Ordinary discards just pile on top; they do not thaw it.

Red 3s

Red 3s are bonus cards. They are never melded into a rank like everything else, they just get laid down in front of you and count. There are of them in the shoe, two per deck.

Putting one down is up to you: hold it as long as you like and place it on your turn whenever you want, and you draw a replacement card when you do.

Because you can hold one, you can also discard one, and a discarded red 3 freezes the pile, exactly as a wild does. It is the one good reason to sit on a red 3 rather than get it down, though you give up the it would have paid you.

Each is worth . If your side has or more on the table, the whole lot doubles — one caught in your hand is worth against you and does not count toward the .

Black 3s

Black 3s are worth . They are the safe discard: a black 3 on top stops the player immediately after you from taking the pile. It blocks that one player only — once they discard on top of it, the block is over. It does not thaw a frozen pile; that stays frozen until somebody takes it. Almost always black 3s show up as points against you, sitting in your hand when the round ends.

There is one exception, and it is the only time a black 3 is ever melded: if you are holding of them, you can play them down as a set to go out. Going out that way, you do not discard — the black 3s are the last of your hand. On the table they count for you, apiece, rather than against you.

Going out

Your side needs canastas down before you can go out. You go out by shedding the last card in your hand — meld it or discard it, either counts. Going out ends the round for everybody, and everything still in the other hands counts against them.

Bonuses

Both are explained where they happen; here they are in one place.

Winning

Scores are totted up at the end of each round. The first side at or over takes the game, and if both cross in the same round the higher total wins.

A round, counted up

Say your side finished a round with two natural canastas, one dirty canasta, three red 3s, 210 in melded card points, 40 left in your partner's hand, and you went out:

The melded card points include the cards inside the canastas — the canasta bonus is on top of them, not instead of them.