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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