First of all, I grew up playing Canasta. Taught Mrs Cad and my stepson and they love it.
Tonight we’re going to his house for a canasta night. Why? Because he has a friend that loves canasta but can’t find anyone to play. His wife hates it, my daughter-in-law hates it and most of the time you can’t find anyone who plays it at all so we finally have a foursome (my other son is starting to like it).
Which brings me to my point. 20 years ago it was easy to find canasta decks. These are sets of two cards with slightly different backs. They are not as wide (left to right) as regular cards so you can more easily hold more cards in your hand. It came with the plastic “basket” aka the “canasta” (Spanish) that was divided onto the discard and draw piles. Try to find one now. Oh I know you can find many online but they aren’t really canasta decks - they are just two decks of regular cards and maybe a plastic canasta but the cards themselves are nothing special. I could go buy 2 decks of Bicycle cards for less money. I can’t find a real canasta deck except vintage ones on eBay. Guess it’s just not that popular.
So do any of you play canasta? Any millenials or Gen-Y’s that you know that play or even heard of it? It’s a shame it’s not more popular because IMO its a great game for kids to learn strategy because it is easy to learn and hard to master. Plus you can play 2-handed, 3-handed cutthroat, and 4-handed partnership. Mrs Cad and I always have 2 decks with us when we travel and will throw down some cards sitting in our hotel room. P
Do his wife and DIL know how to play it and actively hate it or they just not interested in learning?
As for it being out of style, I was born in 1980 and never learned how to play it. It always seemed like Bridge was an old people game and Canasta (and pinochle) was for even older people. I feel like the only time I’ve ever even heard the word Canasta is in TV shows or movies when someone in a nursing home mentions it.
Personally, I never learned to play it and don’t know the first thing about it. I always wanted to learn Bridge but never got around to that. Being in Wisconsin, I really should have learned to play Sheepshead, I don’t think I’ve ever even met someone that knows how to play it. Within my little circle of friends during college we lived for Eucher. Played it just about every day, for hours, for 4 years. Played a decent amount of Cribbage too.
They’ve played it and despise it with the heat of a billion suns.
I grew up in the 70’s and grew up playing canasta, pinochle and hearts. Of those 3, hearts is the only one that people may have played but even those people seem to be a smaller and smaller number.
Back in late '90s/early '00s, Hearts was really, really popular. I assume that’s when Windows started including it in their OS (Win 95? 98? XP?) so when you got a new computer instead of just Solitaire and Minesweeper, you also had Hearts and Spider Solitaire/Freecell and maybe Spades.
I’m 43 and have never met anyone who plays canasta, as far as i know. It’s been in my general consciousness as an “old people” game since I was little.
I’m GenX.
My parents were hardcore bridge people and my mother stumbled across a canasta deck somewhere (thrift store most likely) so she brought it home, we read the rules, and played it a few times. I don’t remember a “basket.” I remember it being kind of like rummy.
I’ve never met anyone in the wild who plays canasta.
Getting together regularly for cards was something my parents and their friends stopped doing about 1965. That’s 55+ years ago now. I never developed the habit, nor do I know any contemporaries who have. Our kids and now grandkids? You gotta be kidding me.
Competitive bridge players still exist. Some are even young. But social card playing is as out of fashion as Jackie Kennedy’s hats. Or so ISTM.
Canasta ‘basket’,
Also used with other card games with a stock and discard pile. Cards can also be placed at right angles to the discard pile to indicate a frozen pile in Canasta.
I learned to play canasta in the 70s. It wasn’t popular back then either.
I have never seen a canasta deck per the OP, nor have I ever seen a canasta basket or anything else specific to the game. Until I read the OP I never knew these things existed. We always played with two regular decks of cards.
I’m 53. I think I’ve always associated canasta with “old people.” Even when I was a kid, and my parents regularly played bridge, they never played canasta. I can remember hearing “playing canasta” mentioned in an episode or two of I Love Lucy, which should give you some notion of how “old” it feels to me.
As I mentioned not long ago in another thread, when I was a kid I assumed that when I grew up I would socialize by playing bridge, like my parents did. In fact, I ended up socializing by playing RPGs instead. I agree with the general sense that social card-playing is not something that a lot of people do these days.
Grew up playing bridge, hearts, spades, gin, and pinochle, but never played canasta until my (then) new in-laws introduced me to it back in the 80s. If you’re familiar with the game, they were both highly aggressive players, and would engage in a great deal of brinksmanship with the size of the stack. I found it stressful!
They also taught me a German card game called “a book and a run“, which could be sometimes similarly stressful.
Thank god we eventually settled on bridge as our favorite game. Very sedate in comparison (mostly).
ETA: I’m 57, and like other posters in this thread, my parents got together a lot of times with other adults to play cards, though mostly hearts.
I learned to play it in the 1970s but haven’t played since. My parents never had card parties but sometimes people stopped over or it was holidays so we’d get out the cards.
Most popular: Euchre. Next: Three-handed pinochle. In the 1980s we played 500 (Bid Euchre.) A few of us played cribbage. Little kids played rummy. I don’t think anybody played hearts.
I think my sister learned a game called “Hate Your Neighbor,” and taught it to us. We played that for awhile but I don’t remember it as some of the online sites describe it. It used a standard deck or decks, and it seems like some allowed you to skip people etc. I thought it was maybe a precursor to (or a poor man’s version of) Uno, subbing regular decks for the specialized ones.
Wikipedia says of Canasta,
It is “the most recent card game to have achieved worldwide status as a classic”.[6]
but also
Canasta became rapidly popular in the United States in the 1950s[12] with many card sets, card trays and books being produced.[13] Interest in the game began to wane there during the 1960s, but the game still enjoys some popularity today, with Canasta leagues and clubs still existing in several parts of the United States.
I grew up playing pinochle, canasta, bridge, cribbage, poker, hearts, spades, etc. But yeah, it is definitely harder to find people to play cards with today than it was in the past. I still satisfy my jones at https://www.pogo.com occasionally.
I played Canasta with my family. It’s not much fun with only 2 people. You need 4 and that can be hard to plan. Card games were great when people used to visit. People today just aren’t as interested in dropping by to play.
I’m 68. I grew up playing spades, Rook, hearts, rummy, pitch (several varieties), and ‘Shit on your neighbor’. I learned Canasta when I went to college and thought it was a boring game relative to the other card games that I played.
I’ve played Canasta a few times since and my original opinion has not changed.
I grew up in the 80s. I don’t remember special canasta decks. I remember bridge decks that were narrower than poker/standard decks.
I don’t think I’ve ever played a real-life game of canasta – just on the computer. Growing up, the most popular games for me were rummy 500 (a precursor to canasta) and hearts. In college, we also played a bit of spades. And then in my 20s (late 90s) cribbage, euchre, and gin (not rummy) were the typical games we played while we sat around and drank and bullshitted. (There were a few other niche games we played – skat, 10 point pitch, piquet, ecarté, and a few others, but those were with a very particular set of people.)
My wife, same generation as me, grew up playing pinochle in Western New York.
Played it every night with my parents and my brother when growing up.
Now playing it about once a week with my partner (with slightly amended rules). Great game!
I’m 35 and learnt to play as a kid, usually with just my dad. I remember having to go and sort my cards behind the sofa when I picked up too many cards for my small hands to hold, so he couldn’t see.
I have a set of Canasta cards now that my wife and I use occasionally, but I don’t think they’re narrower and they didn’t come with a basket. They do have the point values on each card which makes scoring easy.
I was mildly surprised to discover a colleague at work of a similar age also played, and we had a couple of games before he left the company.
