Yahoo

Playing @ Yahoo! Games

So you're a loser and you don't have any friends who will play canasta with you at home. Well Yahoo! Games can help you out. Sign up for a Yahoo! Games account and you can play canasta online with people from all around the world.

Yahoo! Games does some things differently than the way they should be, so I'll give the scoop on how it works on the web.

Canasta History

The Rules

Terms to Know

Strategic Tips

First you need to get into a canasta room. If you're new, go to one of the rooms marked as a social lounge until you play enough games to get an official rating. (When you first join you will be listed as provisional, until you play 20 games). Once in a room there are lots of buttons. You can create a table using the buttons on the left, and choose the setting you want (number of players, number of canastas needed to go out, number of cards to draw from the deck). You sit at the imaginary table and wait for players. You draw from the deck by clicking on it. To meld cards, click on them in your hand to highlight them, then click the meld button. Dont worry, Yahoo! wont allow you to cheat. Beware, once you press you can't "go back". You can chat in the little box below the table. You'll cath on fairly quickly.

Variations of Canasta

Playing @ Yahoo!Games

Yahoo! has some odd rules. For one, they don't use the "you need a canasta to cover your red threes" rule. At Yahoo! you cannot pick up a pile if you only have 2 cards in your hand. At Yahoo!, when the pile has no cards to draw from, you cannot pick up the discard pile, even if you have a pair matching the top card. The good news is that Yahoo! does the math for you.

Yahoo! Games uses an unusual rating system that tells others how good you are. When you lose games your rating goes down, when you win, it goes up. They use a mathematical formula to determine how much your rating changes. It works basically like this: The higher your opponents rating is, the more points you earn for beating him. Conversly if your rating is high, and you lose to someone not as high as you, you will lose more points than if you lost to someone better than you. The bigger the rating differential, the more points there are at stake.

At Yahoo! Games, people often engage in Canasta tournaments. Lots of people get together and have a tournament for loads of fun. To get in to one of these tournaments you usually have to be a member of the club or group or league that is hosting the tournament. Whoa! dont get scared. The process is simple. You go to the groups home page and sign up. That's it. Some groups play just for fun, some groups have their own special ranking systems and even PRIZES!

If you're interested in joining a group that plays canasta tournaments nightly, just for fun, with no extra ratings, no fuss, just plain out good fun, I have a place for you. You can try to get in the club that I sometimes work in. Go to our Yahoo! Groups home page by following this link, and read up on our group. You can check out our geocities page as well. If you're interested, come in to Advanced Lounge (don't let the name fool you, you need not be advanced to play) at 8:00 pm EST when sign-ups begin for the tournament. We'll help you out from there. We are always looking for people to play with, and we promise you will not be disapointed. Hope to see you there!

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