How To Play Canasta

This game of Canasta has originated in Uruguay around 1940’s. Since then it became so popular that it spread all over USA, Argentina and throughout the world. In those days it almost became a premier card game. It has a few versions and mainly the Classic Canasta and Modern American Canasta is played these days.
Canasta can be best played with a group of four players but it also has its own two or three players  version.Now lets get into the rules of Canasta and how to play the game.
It is generally played with 2 packs of 52 cards along with 4 jokers. So totally 108 cards are used in the game. Each player is dealt with 15 cards each. Then both the players in turn can pick their card from the stock of cards and discard cards into the discard pile.
After a player picks a card he can meld cards like with three kings. After a player melds his card he ends his turn and discards a card. The melded cards are kept with face up on the table. The game ends when one of the player goes out which means he disposes all his cardsin his hand. A player can go out when he makes atleast a seven card meld.
You can even go out with melding the whole hand and no cards to discard. Now if the pile of cards runs out of cards then the game comes to an end and the hands are scored. The main goal of the game is to score as much more points as possible than your opponent. And when the game is played with partners, then the melds belong to a partnership and not to an individual player.
The cards have some standard values like jokers are worth 50 points each. Deuce and Ace are worth 20 points each,4,5,6,7 are worth 5 points and 8,9,10,Jack,Queen and King are worth 10 points each.
Some bonus scores are also given like for going out a player is given 100 points, for  natural Canasta a player gets 500 points, for mixed Canasta a player gets 300 points  and some more bonus patterns are included in the game. The bonus are calculated and then the cards melded by each player or a team is calculated.
The victory margin is calculated and the player or the team with maximum points is the winner of the game.This is the way Canasta is generally played and after playing for a while anyone can master the game easily.