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Hi, my name is Windy St. George and this is how to play Canasta. Canasta is played with
a combination of three regular decks. It can be confusing so it's best to get a specialty
Canasta deck. I'm using Canasta caliente but, I've taken out the specialty caliente rules.
You can also get specialty just Canasta decks. Canasta points are divided amongst the cards,
there's four of each number. The numbers go from two up to ten and then the face cards
and the ace. The smaller ones seven and under are worth five points. Eight and up to king
are worth ten points. Aces are worth twenty points. There's also specialty cards. There's
extra one hundred bonus points that you can play. And then there's wild cards. There's
two kinds, little wilds which are twenty points, big wilds which are fifty points. And there's
special stock cards which we'll see how that works in a moment. Canasta is usually played
with four players, in two teams, teams facing each other, partners facing each other. The
dealer will deal out eleven cards
and the point of Canasta is to make melds which are runs of numbers. You can't go sequentially,
you can't do one, two, three. Everything has to be the same number. So you'll look through
your card and have you'll try to get at least three of one number. You can use a wild card
but you should not have more wild cards than you have natural cards. And the points are
worth, they're marked. The smaller numbers are worth five points and the bigger numbers
are worth ten points so you take your three and you put them down. So lets say you had
three fours and you put them down and that's a meld. Later on you can add to it whenever
you get fours you can add to it. Then there is a prize pile or discard pile. When you
go through your hand you and your partner will decide which cards you want to lay down
as a meld. When you're done making melds you can either draw a card and use it to make
melds or you can take the prize card if it's available. At the end of your turn you will
discard one of the cards in your hand and it goes into the kitty or prize pile. The
special cards such as stop and bonus if it gets played into it, stop you from being able
to take, to take the prize cards. So if someone plays stop card no one can take the top card
until they've taken the stop into their hand. Then they may only take one card and only
if they can make a natural meld with other cards in their hand. So to take the seven
they would need at least two other sevens in their hand that they can immediately lay
down. So you play continuous taking turns laying down melds trying to get the most that
points you can. When you run through the deck you count up your points and see who wins,
usually it's about five thousand points per hand, you play three hands per game. And that's
how you play Canasta.