Talk:Canasta

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20:10, 25 December 2006 (UTC)Victuallersname

Thanks, whoever added Hand and Foot. I'd been meaning to do that myself. PurplePlatypus 20:01, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

There was a small grammar error around " for a different number of cards than " which I have corrected. Victuallers 20:10, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Bolivia?

Has anyone heard of a variation called Bolivia, in this not only is there a canasta but a Bolivia(7 wild cards) and a samba (7 card run). This game seems to be well established in New Zealand but I cannot find any mention of it on the internet or on wikipedia, can anyone help? Chuck (talk) 04:27, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Red vs black three as an initial upcard

I checked www.pagat.com and the US playing card company rules. According to pagat, if the initial upcard is a red three or a wild card, the pile is frozen, and a new card is turned on the top of the upcard. According to the US playing card company rules, the previous scenario happens if the initial upcard is any three or a wild card. I do not have the Regency Club rules at hand right now, but if I remember correctly, according to them a new card is turned if the initial upcard is a three or a wild card, but only red threes and wild cards freeze the pile. (Of course, you cannot discard a red three, but a red three can still be the first upcard of a deal, which is not discarded but turned from the stock. HTH)Punainen Nörtti 07:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Two Player Rules

no cite for this but i've played classic 2-player canasta for about fifteen years - one common variant to 2-player canasta (maybe these are 'midwest rules'?) has been that the pile does not get frozen if a red 3 or wildcard is initially turned up - you just keep turning over cards until it's covered. freezing the stack right off the bat kinda slows things down and canasta is already a pretty slow game. 63.238.226.118 21:18, 22 February 2007 (UTC)lonefrontranger

Acaba

I have always played canasta and 2-player with a rule called acaba. If a player says Acaba then the opponent(s) score 1500 points and the team or player who said it scores 0. Is anyone else familiar with this rule? It works well in situations where a team has picked up such a good pack that the opponents stand no chance of recovering the hand and if they can't go out they can loose the entire game in one hand.

In 4 player you are allowed to ask your team mate "Shall I say acaba?" in which case you are bound by their answer.

Unfortunately I'm not sure of the spelling of acaba which makes searching for references to it very hard.
Slangivar 16:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Acaba means "to finish" in Portuguese, in which case your spelling is correct. Perhaps that also has something to do with how the word is used during gameplay? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.177.110.160 (talk) 02:18, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In Spanish 'acabar' means 'end'. I've read the rule is to say "acabar". Madyno (talk) 15:11, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Urgent - needs intro paragraph

In its current state this article plunges straight into its TOC, with no intro paragraph/lead line. I dropped by here because of a mention on Powder Springs, Georgia about a Cherokee chief named Ana Kanasta, wondering if there was an etymological conenction; though I've always thought this game-name was Spanish in origin, somehow...Skookum1 (talk) 15:43, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I added a concise intro and reorganized the sections to make more sense... no reason to start off with "variations" before explaining the main game :). However with no History section, it's difficult to include any cite-able info about the game's origin - I assumed it to be Uruguay from the main section. I'd love to contribute to style and formatting to improve the article if anyone can provide some historical sources... Enigmatic2k3 (talk) 20:04, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Hand and foot changes

I made changes in the "Other Variants" adding variants from the version I play. I also changed the part about it being from the 80s to 70s, because when my parents lived in Florida in the 70s and 80s they played hand and foot, in the variant that I know, in a league so as to meet their neighbors. So I know it existed in the 70s. The Person Who Is Strange 00:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, this section is quite bulky; it needs its own article. The Person Who Is Strange 00:31, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

For 2-player Hand & Foot, use 3 decks of 52, rather than 4 decks. Battlewithin (talk) 19:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

This might be due to multiple editors having different variants in mind, but there are a couple of apparent inconsistencies in the Hand & Foot rules. One of them says that the hand gets 11 cards and the foot 13, but also claims that you get to choose which pile is the foot; this doesn't make sense if the (unequal) sizes are as stated. (I'll rewrite it to be two separate variants.) Another seems to say that you can't go out if a partner has threes in hand, but unless table talk is allowed (or if asking permission to go out is required instead of optional), I don't see how the player is supposed to know that. I'm going to assume that the intent was that you can't go out if you still have threes in hand, and simply delete the text, since it's subsumed by the rule that you have to empty your hand to go out. Joule36e5 (talk) 06:19, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

International Canasta Laws

While Culbertson on Canasta is cited, mention should also be made of Complete Canasta by Ralph Michaels and Charles H. Goren with The Official Rules and Play compiled by Josefina Artayeta de Viel (NY: Pellegrini, August 1949). But these rules--agreed upon by a committee of local card authorities in Argentina--satisfied no one outside Argentina, and perhaps fewer inside. I am not even sure if Culbertson and Michaels/Goren/Viel agreed on the same rules, tho both books were published in 1949.

Hence, a National Canasta Laws Commission was formed to draft rules for North America (to work with a similar commission to cover South America). Oswald Jacoby was co-Chairman of this commission which agreed with its South American counterpart upon the New International Canasta Laws. The next year, these rules were published in Complete Canasta by Oswald Jacoby (NY: Doubleday, 1950). This book went through several editions, since it contained the International Canasta Laws--now the standard laws--replacing all prior rules. One must presume that later variations in Canasta rules are but local variations without authority.

In 1986 book, Oswald and James Jacoby card games guide notes that Canasta was the greatest card craze in US history, put to rest by television which forever ended evening card game play. Rumjal. rumjal 13:13, 13 April 2009 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rumjal (talk • contribs)

Sequences or runs are not permitted in Canasta

I understand that in Canasta, a player cannot make melds by having sequences or runs - for example, seven-eight-nine of hearts - as one can in rummy. I thought that the only way to get a meld in Canasta was to have cards of the same denomination.ACEOREVIVED (talk) 22:19, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

That depends on the version of the game. In certain variants, such as Bolivia, runs and sequences are valid melds Purplebackpack89 23:45, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

First play after deal IS the advantage determined by cutting for dealer

Quote from the article with bolding added to emphasize point of discussion:

"The initial dealer is chosen by any common method, although in Canasta there is no privilege or advantage to being the dealer. The deal then rotates clockwise after every hand. The dealer shuffles the pack, the player to the dealer's right cuts, and the dealer deals out a hand of 11 cards to each player. The remaining cards are left in a stack in the center of the table. One card is taken from the top of the stack and placed face up to start the discard pile. If that card is wild or a red three, another card is turned and placed on top of it. That continues until a natural card or a black three is turned up. "

While it is true there is no advantage to being the dealer, the fact is, determining the dealer actually does convey an advantage but it is to the first player. The advantage of first play is the potential to take the discard pack with any valuable card (wild card, red three, black three) included in it which has been turned up by the dealer and subsequently covered by a playable card. Of course that player must also have the ability to meet the initial meld point requirement. The advantage of first play can not, and should not, be blocked by letting an initial turned up black three limit this player's advantage. Therefore, the initial discard pile must have any wild-card, red three, or BLACK three covered by a regular playable card before the dealer ends the initial deal process. JackME (talk) 16:52, 24 November 2023 (UTC)