Canasta, by John Bolinger

This card game was wildly popular during the 1940’s and 1950’s.  My parents played it often with friends when they weren’t playing pinochle.  I still enjoy playing the game, which works for two up to five players.  Sometimes people like to play with partners if there are only four players.

                                                       CANASTA 

Ace = 20

2 = 20  (wild card)

Joker = 50 (wild card)

Face cards = 10

8 through 10 = 10

4 through 7 = 5

Black 3 = 5 (Can’t be used in a canasta but is good discard)
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Mixed canasta  (at least four of a kind plus wild cards in total of seven cards) = 300

Natural canasta ( seven of a kind) = 500

Red 3 = 100 (only after meld) or can count negatively.  All four at once total 800

Red 3 = draw again
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Begin with 11 cards for each player

Begin with 50-point meld

1500-3000 points = 90-point meld

3000-5000 points = 120-point meld
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Pile of discards may be picked up instead of drawing a new card if there are at least 3 such cards on table or 2 in hand.

Wild card (placed sideways as discard) can freeze pile so that picking up occurs only with two of a kind IN HAND matching top card.

About John

About John John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes. Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018 View all posts by John →
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