Draw the top card(s) of the closed stock (drawing the top 2 cards from the closed stock is a default option, but Least one canasta to end the game (by default - 2 canastas are needed to end the game).Įach player in turn performs one or more actions in the following order:ġ. A meld of seven or more cards is a canasta and the player must have at

Points are earned by melding sets of three or more cards of the same rank. The object of the game is to be the first to score the agreed-upon number of points (default - 2,500 points). The stock, and the top card of the stock is turned faceup and placed alongside the stock to start a discard pile. The rest of the deck is placed facedown to form Only two-player canasta variations are supported. Josephine was asked to codify the rules for publication and so she did.Ĭanasta is played with 108 cards, consisting of two standard 52-card packs with four Jokers. Josephine Artayate de Viel introduced canasta to her New York friends and the game took over the Regency Club in Manhattan.

The first player to make real money with canasta was neither Santos nor Serrato but Josephine Artayate de Viel, a visitor to New York from Buenos Aires. Only after the Second World War canasta found its way into the United States. Then canasta game jumped to Chile and Peru and Brazil.Ĭanasta epidemic was now a South American affair. Vacationing Argentineans liked the game and brought it to Argentina, where canasta managed to drive away bridge from the prestigious Club de Bridge. As name had a nice ring to it, everyone agreed and the name stuck!Ĭanasta game started spreading like wildfire at first within the Jockey Club, then throughout the whole capital city of Montevideo, and then up the coastline of Uruguay. That's how the initial name of 'Canastillo' appeared, which in Spanish means 'little basket.' A bit later, someone suggested to make the name shorter - 'Canasta' ('basket'). Santos had merely referred to it as 'The Game.'Īt one point, while sitting in a restaurant at their 'play-test' table, Santos noticed a small wicker basket they had borrowed from a waiter to store their cards. Eventually, with his partner Alberto Serrato these two gradually introduced a double-deck game that involved melding, adding to melds, and the ability to claim the entire discard pile under certain circumstances.Īrturo Gomez Harley and Ricardo Sanguinetti liked the game as well but the game was not yet named. Sanchez shifted from Bridge to Rummy but Rummy was too fast for him. The card game that Segundo Sanchez was initially playing was Bridge - and Bridge took way too much of his time, and in the mornings, Sanchez felt dull and mentally exhausted. In 1939 in Montevideo, Uruguay, Segundo Sanchez was a member of the elite Jockey Club where he used to relax with a game of cards before dinner with associates. The story of the invention of canasta was first published in Coronet Magazine in 1953 (Coronet was the rival to Reader's Digest at the time.)

The credit for canasta invention goes to an attourney by the name of Segundo Santos and Alberto Serrato, an architect. Theīiggest meld of all (7 cards), the canasta, is called a 'basket'. Is, 'weaving the cards', is a colorful Spanish way of saying that a meld of three of a kind or more is being 'woven' together. The game also reached craze proportions in 1950s Britain. During the 50s, canasta was one of the most popular card games in the United States. The New York Times Magazine wrote several articles on canasta - a rummy-like card game.Ĭanasta was invented in Uruguay around 1940. Life featured a cover story about canasta and published canasta rules inside. Fortune magazine reported that sales of canasta books and card decks were breaking all prior records. Time magazine wrote that canasta 'had spread across the entire hemisphere'. When 50 years ago the Canasta 'craze' reached the United States, Newsweek was reporting that Canasta now 'rivaled Monopoly and Mah Jongg, the two biggest games of all time'.

Canasta card game humor