02 - Gameplay and Scoring

As mentioned in the introduction, Partnership Canasta is a progressive multi-hand game that incorporates many of the best features of both Bridge and Rummy. It is the marriage of these two very diverse games that has made Canasta one of the classic card games of all time.

Like Bridge, Partnership Canasta is based on several scoring objectives, which include collecting 7-card sets (or melds) called “Canastas”, playing special bonus cards, and specific gameplay.

Just like Rummy, Canastas can be collected directly in a player’s hand or by picking up the discard pile. Once a meld is placed on a table, partners can add to the meld. However, unlike Rummy, standard Partnership Canasta only allows melding within a certain card rank (all 4s, 5s, Jacks, and so on). Also, players cannot play off an opponent’s hand.

The main strategy in any Canasta game is twofold.

1)   Collect as many Canastas as possible.

2)   .Control the discard pile.

There are several ways to accomplish these objectives. These will be discussed in the chapter on strategy.

Partnership Canasta games are played to 5000 points. There are two different types of points: Basic and Meld. The “Basic” is the total score of all completed melds, whether they are Canastas or Red Treys. There is also a 100-point bonus for going out.

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END OF HAND SCORING: BASIC
GOING OUT	100
EACH NATURAL CANASTA	500
EACH MIXED CANASTA	500
EACH RED TREY	100
PLAYING 4 RED TREYS	800
BLACK TREY CANASTA	800

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The special “Black Trey Meld” is only allowed while going out to end a hand, and will be discussed in detail in the “Playing With Treys” Chapter.

Additionally, the second scoring value is the “Meld” All cards (except red treys) have assigned point values that are tabulated and this goes towards the “Count” portion of the score pad. Card values are as follows:

CARD VALUES
JOKERS	50
DEUCES	20
ACES	20
KING THRU 8	10
7 THRU BLACK 3	5

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Another interesting feature of Canasta is the progressive nature of scoring. As the game progresses and teams accumulate points, the task of “getting on board” becomes more difficult, based on a teams total score. During any given hand, the two teams may have different starting meld value requirements. The standard scoring tier for Partnership Canasta is listed below as a reference.

STARTING MELD VALUE
LESS THAN 0	15
0-1499	50
1500-2999	90
3000 AND UP	120

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There are several ways to accomplish these objectives. These will be discussed in the chapter on strategy. The starting meld values and their effect on gameplay will be described in later chapters. Now that you've been given the general lay of the land, let's get on to the details of the game.
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01 - Introduction

If you know the card game Canasta, most likely you learned it from Aunts or Uncles or Grandparents. That’s nothing strange, since America’s “Golden Age of Canasta” occurred in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Unlike almost every other card game in existence, the origins of Canasta are exact and detailed. Attorney named Segundo Santos and architect Alberto Serrato, fellow card players at the Montevideo Jockey Club in Uruguay, had been regular partners in games of Rummy and Bridge. While the complexities of Bridge often made games last for hours, the simplicity of Rummy allowed for quick games that required very little thought.

Santos and Serrato wanted something that combined the features of both games. So, sometime in 1939, they intertwined the melding process (collecting sets of cards) of Rummy with the partner-play of Bridge.

The two players invited fellow bridge players Arturo Gomez Harley and Ricardo Sanguinetti to help them play several trial games, where they discussed the good and bad aspects and through trial and error, they developed a their new card game. Soon, the name “canasta” came about, based on the Spanish word for “basket”, which is where the cards were stored after each night of play. The popularity of Canasta grew, with several national variations being played throughout South America. It was the soldiers and sailors who had toured South America during the Second World War who first brought the game back to the States.  

Although the game achieved moderate popularity during the war period, it had not been formally introduced to the United States in card clubs and gaming parlors until 1948, Then, it officially hit the mainstream in December 1949, when LIFE Magazine published a short feature article about the basic rules for Canasta and the Canasta craze.

Even though the game’s popularity waned after the 50s and the advent of other entertainment options, such as television, fast food, and shopping malls, Canasta still held a niche audience among family groups and smaller social circles.

In the succeeding generations, the game’s popularity ebbed and waned with variations such as Samba, Mestiza, Hand-and-Foot, and a brand-name game called Canasta Caliente reintroducing this Baby Boomer game to new generations, if only for short periods of time.

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However, those few card players who know Canasta are usually die-hard fans, staying up late nights and enjoying the complexities that only Canasta has to offer.

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