Canasta is a melding card game played here as a two-player game with two full decks. You collect cards of the same rank into melds and aim to build a canasta — a meld of seven cards — before your opponent does. Deuces are wild, red threes are bonus cards, and the game runs to 5000 points. Free in your browser, no sign-up.
Goal: meld cards of matching rank, complete at least two canastas, and go out before your opponent to bank the round.
| Card | Points |
|---|---|
| Ace, 2 (wild) | 20 |
| King down to 8 | 10 |
| 7 down to 4, black 3 | 5 |
| Red 3 (bonus) | 100 each |
A red 3 is set aside for a 100-point bonus and replaced from the stock. Going out earns another 100 — but only once you hold two complete canastas.
Three AI difficulty levels (easy, medium, hard) from the menu. This build uses the two-player rules: draw two cards each turn, and going out requires two canastas. The frozen pile, red-three bonuses, and rising initial-meld minimums are all in play. Install it as an app from your browser menu to play offline.
Canasta was invented around 1939 in Montevideo, Uruguay, by attorney Segundo Santos and his partner Alberto Serrato. The name means "basket" in Spanish. It swept the United States in the early 1950s and for a few years rivalled Contract Bridge as the most-played card game in American homes.
For the complete rules, including card values, the frozen pile, the initial meld ladder and going out, read the full Canasta rules guide.
A canasta is a meld of seven or more cards of the same rank. A natural canasta uses no wild cards and scores 500 points; a mixed canasta includes one to three deuces and scores 300. Building canastas is the heart of the game and you need two of them to go out.
The four deuces are wild and can stand in for any rank inside a meld. A meld may hold at most three wild cards and must always keep at least two natural ones. Discarding a wild card freezes the discard pile, making it harder for either player to pick up.
A red 3 is a bonus card, not a playing card. When you draw one you set it aside for 100 points and draw a replacement. They score for you whether you win or lose the round, so you bank them immediately rather than holding them in your hand.
The rules require two complete canastas in your melds before you may empty your hand and end the round. This stops a player from racing out early on a thin hand and rewards the patient build. Until you have both, you must keep at least one card back.