How To Play Canasta Game

By Author: Rummy
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If you like rummy, have learnt it, played it, but want something more out of it, you should take a look at Canasta Rummy. The more complex form of the simpler rummy game, Canasta Rummy offers added excitement to players.

Although considered to be best played with 4 players playing in 2 teams, a game of Canasta rummy requires 2 or more players to be played. You need to have 2 standard card decks and 4 extra jokers, all of which will be valued in points. In the point table, jokers are ranked on the top, each being 50 points in worth. Among the other cards, A and 2 are worth 20 points each. K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8 are worth 10 points each and 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 are the cards with the lowest value of 5 points each. The jokers, apart from being the cards of the highest points also act as wild cards, which can be used as substitute for any other card. In some cases, 2's can also be used as substitute cards.

At the start of the game, each player is dealt a fixed number of cards and the cards that remain are placed face down, as a stack in ...
... the centre of the table. The player sitting on the immediate left of the dealer picks the first card. If he finds it useful, then he can replace it with a card from his hand and if not, the picked card can be discarded.

The discarded card is thrown face up on the table. The cards which are found to be useful form sets of cards which are called melds. The player who ends up using all the cards in the meld can go out. However, before a player can go out, the team has to fulfill some conditions. Although, these conditions depend on the players, normally a meld is needed to be 7 card strong to allow a players to leave.

Once a team possesses a 7 card meld, its players can go out by melding all their cards. The game becomes a race, in which each player tries to use all his cards and the player completing this motive first, wins. In case, none of the players are able to make melds with all the cards, the player with the maximum points at the time when the stack in the middle is finished, is declared the winner.

A meld in the game of Canasta game, is a set of cards which are in a series. This series should have 3 of more cards of the same rank. The completed melds are kept face up on the table and players one team can contribute to each others' melds. The best meld in a game of Canasta Rummy is considered to be the one made of 7 cards.

As is clear from the process of the game, Canasta Rummy is more complicated than other forms of Rummy. So, if you are looking for more fun, you should definitely try this game out.