Canasta Del Uruguay - Instructions and Rules, With Step-By-Step Explanations on How to Play Canasta

By Cecilia Salinas

Canasta del Uruguay is know more commonly known as Canasta. This exciting card game was created in Montevideo in the 1940s and quickly became the most widely played game of its day. This informative introduction to the game is written in step by step sections to let the novice fully understand what makes this game so popular even today. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jan 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447484868

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Canasta Del Uruguay

1. Introduction to Canasta

The game of Canasta originated in the South American republic of Uruguay, spread to Argentina, and it is now being played throughout Latin America and the U.S.A. It has inevitably squeezed out other card games. The Canasta craze has now reached Britain and the Continent.

Canasta is neither a lady’s game like Bridge nor a man’s game like Poker. It is both. In Canasta, both sexes find the attraction and excitement most suited to their taste.

Canasta requires some of the skill of Bridge—enough to make it interesting but not enough to make it toilsome. Memory helps—but it is not taxed.

Canasta calls for the gambling spirit of Poker. Once the easy fundamentals are learned, the game is your own—your resourcefulness, your deceptiveness, your sporting blood against your opponents’.

A bad hand does not necessarily spell defeat—new cards will be coming in, drawn through luck or picked up by skilful preparation. The tide may turn at any moment until the hand is played out.

An error does not necessarily spoil your hand. Your luck or your skill can overcome it as the fortunes of the game shift and change.

There is no bidding on which a player embarrassingly betrays his shortcomings. And a mistake can often be covered up—thus reducing the fears and trials suffered in Bridge by amateur players.

Skill, judgment, intuition, instinct if you will—are all pitted against each other. The technical expert is not invincible if his opponent’s gambling spirit pays dividends. Everyone who knows the simple fundamentals has a chance, which may come at any time. Everyone, even the perennial card-hater, will come to find Canasta both entertaining and exciting after he (or she) plays a few times.

Throughout this book the Uruguayan terms are printed together with the English equivalents. It is not necessary, of course, to use all the foreign terms.

2. The Players

Two or more players can play a game of Canasta.

Two, three or five players play against each other.

Four players divide themselves into couples and, as partners, one couple plays against the other.

Six players divide themselves into three couples and, as partners, each couple plays against the others.

If seven players are available, it is better to make up a table of four and a table of three. The four highest cards drawn determines who plays at the two-couples table.

The four-player game provides the highest tension and calls for the greatest skill. The partners seek both to help each other and to attack their opponents. This is therefore the most popular game of Canasta.

The play in each game is substantially the same. We shall therefore concern ourselves mainly with the four-player game. The slight variations on the other games will be given separately later on.

3. Standard Decks

Two decks