Canasta rules: how to play, meld and score a canasta
* Difficulty is our editorial read on how hard the game is to pick up — not an official rating. Player counts and deck sizes come from the game's rulebook.
Canasta is a rummy-style card game most commonly played by 4 people in 2 fixed partnerships, using 2 standard decks plus 4 jokers. Each player gets 11 cards, and partnerships build melds of matching cards, aiming for a full 7-card "canasta." The first partnership to reach the game's target score wins.
Setup
Two standard 52-card decks plus 4 jokers make up the 108-card Canasta pack. Shuffle everything together, deal 11 cards to each player, and place the rest face down as the stock pile in the middle. Turn the top stock card face up to start the discard pile.
Jokers and every 2, regardless of suit, are wild cards in Canasta, and they can substitute for almost any card needed in a meld. Partners sit across from each other, and a partnership's melds and score are shared between both players, not tracked separately.
Canasta is more standardized than folk-game families like Rummy, since it descends from a specific 1949-51 codification of the game, but it still has a real amount of source disagreement on some of the finer scoring details. Where that's the case below, the figures given are the ones most widely cited across current published rule guides.
Gameplay
A partnership can't just meld anything they want the moment they draw a strong hand. The very first meld a side puts down each hand has to meet a minimum point value, and that minimum climbs as a partnership's cumulative score grows across the game, so a team that's pulling ahead has to work harder to get their next meld started than one that's behind.
On your turn, you draw either the top card of the stock or, if it's available, the entire discard pile, then try to build or add to melds before discarding one card to end your turn. Taking the whole discard pile usually requires being able to use its top card immediately, either completing a meld with it or laying it straight onto one already on the table. The discard pile can also be "frozen," typically after a wild card or a black three lands on top of it, which blocks anyone from taking it until it's unfrozen by a side finally melding successfully.
A meld starts at a minimum of 3 cards of the same rank and grows from there; once a meld reaches 7 cards, it becomes a canasta. A side needs to complete at least one canasta before either partner can go out, ending the hand for both partnerships and moving to scoring.
Scoring
Canasta scoring layers together meld bonuses, red three bonuses, and a penalty for anything still sitting unmelded in a player's hand when the hand ends.
| Scoring event | Points |
|---|---|
| Natural canasta (7 cards, no wild cards) | 500 |
| Mixed canasta (7 cards, includes wild cards) | 300 |
| Red three, melded (each) | 100 |
| All four red threes melded by one side | 800 total (200 each) |
| Going out | 100 bonus (200 if going out "concealed") |
Cards used in melds count toward a side's score at fixed values: jokers score 50 points, 2s and aces score 20, 8 through king score 10, and 3 through 7 score 5, with black threes also counted at 5 unless they're still sitting unused in hand at the end, in which case they carry no special bonus at all. Red threes work differently from every other card: they're melded automatically for their bonus as soon as a side draws them, but only actually score if that side manages at least one meld during the hand, otherwise the red-three value counts against them instead.
The minimum point value required for a side's first meld of the hand rises with their score so far:
| Partnership's score so far | Minimum initial meld |
|---|---|
| Negative | 15 |
| 0–1,495 | 50 |
| 1,500–2,995 | 90 |
| 3,000 or more | 120 |
The game typically ends once a side's cumulative score reaches 5,000, at which point the higher total wins.
Regional variations
Canasta's history runs through Argentina and Uruguay in the 1940s, and different regions settled on genuinely different conventions rather than one universal ruleset, which is exactly why a side-by-side comparison matters more here than getting every single American figure pinned to the decimal.
| American Canasta | Italian Canasta (Canastone) | Argentine / original Canasta | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deck | 2 decks + 4 jokers (108 cards) | 3 decks + 6 jokers (162 cards) | 2 decks, closer to the original 1940s pack |
| Red threes | Bonus if melded, penalty if held at hand's end | Must be laid down the moment they're drawn, can't be held back at all; a red three still in hand when play ends is a steep penalty (commonly cited around −500) | Similar bonus/penalty structure to American play, with regional scoring targets layered on top |
| Drawing from the pile | One stock card, or the whole discard pile under certain conditions | Two stock cards, or the whole discard pile plus one extra stock card | The discard pile is described as permanently frozen in the original ruleset, a stricter version of the "frozen pile" concept |
| Wild-card canastas | Scored as a mixed canasta like any other wild-heavy meld | Has its own distinct bonus tier for an all-wild canasta, separate from the standard natural/mixed split | An all-wild canasta scores unusually high, commonly cited in a wide 2,000–4,000 range depending on how many deuces it contains |
| Game target | Commonly 5,000 | Commonly cited higher, around 12,000 | Varies by source |
Treat this table as the commonly cited shape of each regional style rather than a single locked ruleset for any of the three, since even American Canasta itself has a "Modern American" variant circulating with its own higher initial-meld thresholds and a 13-card deal instead of 11. Confirm the specific figures with your table before a game where the stakes matter.
The 2-player game
Canasta scales down to 2 players without needing a whole separate rulebook, but a few specific adjustments keep the math working with only one hand per side instead of two. Each player is dealt 15 cards instead of 11, since there's no partner's hand to lean on for building melds. Drawing also changes: a player takes two cards from the stock on their turn instead of one, though still discards only a single card, which keeps hands from thinning out too fast with only two people sharing the workload of drawing down the stock.
Going out is harder in the 2-player game too. Rather than needing just one completed canasta before ending the hand, a player typically has to complete two canastas first. That single change does a lot to keep 2-player Canasta from ending too quickly, since one strong hand alone can't close things out the way it sometimes can at a 4-player table. The frozen discard pile rule still applies the same way it does in the standard game, blocking anyone from taking the pile after a wild card lands on top until someone melds successfully again.
FAQ
How many points do you need for a natural canasta?
A natural canasta, a completed 7-card meld with no wild cards in it, scores 500 points. A mixed canasta that includes one or more wild cards scores 300 instead.
What are red threes worth in Canasta?
Each melded red three is worth 100 points, and if one side collects and melds all four red threes, the bonus jumps to 800 total. Red threes only score if that side has made at least one other meld during the hand, otherwise their value counts as a penalty instead.
Can you play Canasta with 2 players?
Yes. Each player gets 15 cards instead of 11, draws two stock cards per turn while still discarding just one, and typically needs to complete two canastas rather than one before going out.
How is Hand and Foot different from Canasta?
Hand and Foot uses several more decks than Canasta's standard two, and deals each player two separate stacks, a "hand" played first and a sealed "foot" opened only after, instead of Canasta's single hand played start to finish. The full breakdown, including Hand and Foot's own scoring tiers, is on the Hand and Foot rules page.