Canasta HD is a popular online card game on Pogo, where you take turns drawing and discarding cards, and creating melds to rack up points.
This game is exclusive for Club Pogo members only.
How to Play
Canasta is played between two teams of 1-2 players each, use 2 decks and 4 jokers, for a total of 108 cards.
In each round, teams create groups of card with the same rank, called melds, until they have exhausted their entire hand. A round ends when a player has no cards and points are awarded for the round based on the card groups that have been made.
A meld is when 3 or more cards of the same value are laid down together. A meld of 7 cards or more is called a Canasta. Red 3’s automatically go to the score area without needing a meld.
In addition to points gained for melded cards, a player can earn bonus points for certain actions:
Going Out – 100 points
Melding Out – 100 points
Mixed Canasta – 300 points
All 4 Red 3’s – 400 points
Natural Canasta – 500 points
Points are gained over multiple rounds until a team reaches or exceeds a total of 5,000 points. The team with the highest core wins.
Tips
Conservative play:
If you are far ahead of your opponent in the game and getting close to 5000 points, consider playing a more conservative Canasta strategy. Instead of trying to build big piles and go for lots of points in a hand, try to keep piles small and meld more of your hand earlier and often to ensure your opponent doesn’t score lots of points – and to keep you in the lead.
Aggressive play:
If you are behind in the overall game and about to lose, a better strategy would be to play more aggressively, attempting to increase the discard pile size and increase the amount of points the winner will make in the round. Some approaches here might include baiting the winning player to pick up the pile early and then freezing it in an attempt to build it up.
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Play the game here : https://www.pogo.com/games/canasta