Those are the newer cards like if you buy “canasta cards” on amazon
You’ve got the backwards. Bridge cards are narrower. I assume becasue you hold a hand of 13 while in poker, it would be typically 5 if you’re actually holding a hand.
I’m 47 and my parents played canasta all the time with my mother’s parents or with friends of the family, often including me and my brother. Now that my grandmother passed away, they are probably playing it less frequently.
We never used special cards, just regular playing cards. And yes, that means that sometimes you end up with a huge mittful.
When I was a kid back in the '50s, I often played Canasta and Gin Rummy with my grandmother. Today, I wouldn’t know the first thing about either game.
I never knew how to play Canasta. My only knowledge of it came from Mad Magazine, back in the 1970s, likely in those George Woodbridge layouts that were as complicated as “Where’s Waldo?” One character would be asking another (in Woodbridge’s own drawn text box and handwriting), “Do you play Canasta?”
I learned bridge and hearts, no problem. They were popular pastimes at the place we spent summers, north of Toronto. The TV got only one channel, and it was often fuzzy, so we spent the evenings playing cards and listening to the radio. And if a fourth was needed for bridge; well, I had to learn. But while we had many bridge tournaments and hearts games on those nights, nobody knew how to play Canasta.
Oddly, in Australia I think the standard deck of cards that you can pick up in a supermarket or newsagent, Queen’s Slipper 52’s, are bridge size. They are all that anyone uses for playing cards at home (or work if you are lucky). Although the company makes poker size cards I don’t think that I have ever seen a deck.
Some years ago, I was scheduled to be in a community theatre production of “The Gin Game,” in which the two leads spend the show playing endless games of gin rummy. My role required a lot of shuffling and dealing, and while the director offered to buy cards for our on-stage games, I had played a lot of cards in my life, and knew what cards I liked to handle–and I knew that if the director bought the cheapest possible (which he was likely to do, from supermarkets and convenience stores), they wouldn’t last a rehearsal, much less a show. It’s the feel of the cards, their strength, and how the cards are, once broken in. So I ordered the cards for our show; Bee cards:
I’ve played with Bees for years (poker, solitaire, bridge, hearts), and they hold up pretty well, over many shufflings and games. Problem was, that the show was cancelled (problems getting the necessary permits from the city), and I ended up with two dozen Bee decks. Maybe it’s time to get back to sleight-of-hand with them–I was a pretty good card mechanic with Bees, back in the day.
Born 1967. I learned to play canasta in New York. Everyone played it. We played other games as well, including poker, blackjack, hearts, gin and pinochle. You were taught the games at the same time you studied your portion, and got to play with the adults for the first time, usually at the after-party after your bar/bat mitzvah.
This was when the immediate family and out-of-town relatives gathered at whoever’s house was biggest, noshed on the leftover food, drank hard liquor, the kids ran around outside no matter what the weather, wore themselves out, then after Havdallah, fell asleep in front of the TV.
The adults, which now included YOU played cards until midnight or so, with a few people falling asleep earlier.
The one game I never played in New York was Euchre, which is practically the official state game of Indiana. I learned Euchre my first weekend here.
Since I’ve lived here, I’ve rarely played canasta, and quite honestly, I haven’t spent a lot of time in New York in about 10 years, which means it may have been that long since I played it. I couldn’t tell you if it’s still played there or not, but now that I think about it, I recall that it seemed to be a game everyone knew, including people who had recently arrived in this country.
It could be that it’s popular in some European countries, and maybe fewer people are coming over from those countries. That’s kind of a WAG, though.
OTOH, if the OP has moved from one state to another, maybe canasta just isn’t as popular in the new state.
Right, surely the popular card games depend on where you are. Obviously bridge, but no one in the thread so far has mentioned whist, bela, scopa, tarot…
I wonder if there is a list somewhere with hard statistics?
I think you’re teasing me, but if you could see how defensive Hoosiers are about their Euchre-- you’d think it was basketball, or something.
Between college (1980s) and now, I’ve been among people who regularly played spades, hearts, cribbage, rummy, poker, Uno, and maybe pinochle; but I’ve never seen anyone play canasta.
Card games can be surprisingly prone to going in and out of fashion. As noted upthread, Hearts was suddenly crazy popular 15-20 years ago and has kind of drifted away. I cannot remember the last time I or anyone else played rummy, but 35, 40 years ago lots of people did.
Card games are also very geographic; Euchre is wildly popular in some places and nearly unknown in others. If you live here, in southern Ontario, you best learn euchre because so many people love to play it. My best friend moved to California and no one there plays it.
As a little bit of historical fun; in westerns, you often see the characters playing poker. It’s practically Hollywood law that a saloon scene have poker games (which devolve into fistfights and gunplay.) Actually, the most popular gambling game in the Wild West was a game called Faro, which basically doesn’t exist anymore.
Poker is in part, a game of skill. Faro, if I remember it correctly (my grandfather played it with me when I was little, but I haven’t played it since) is completely a game of chance (save for maybe card counting). Even though gambling isn’t specifically mentioned in the Hays code, showing games of pure chance could run a film afoul of the censors. This is why poker is what you nearly always see when people are playing cards for money in older films.
Oh, Lordy, do I hate Ontarians’ love for euchre. “Hey, let’s play cards. Bridge, anyone?”
“How about euchre?”
“Naw, let’s play bridge.”
“No, everybody here knows how to play euchre. Nobody knows how to play bridge. Let’s play euchre.”
And I spent the next two hours wishing euchre had never been invented.
Good grief! That’s exactly my reaction when I was in the military. Whenever anyone said, “Let’s play cards”, it was always Spades. I cannot stand that game. Why not play a game that requires more thinking, such as Pinochle, Bridge, or Cribbage.
I was born in 1965, and grew up in Wisconsin. I’ve heard of canasta, mostly from older TV shows or movies, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it played, nor have I ever known anyone to play it.
My parents played a lot of bridge, and my dad played pinochle with his friends, but I never learned either of those games. When I was in college, I did play a fair amount of cribbage and sheepshead (very popular in Wisconsin; my grandmother called it by the German name, Schafkopf), and I later learned how to play hearts.
49 here. The only card games I’ve played a lot of are hearts, gin and spades. I’ve played some poker but could never get into it. And my card-playing stint was a long time ago (I do, however, do card magic with some gambling routines). Never met anyone that played canasta to my knowledge.
It seems to me that a lot of the “young’ns”, if they play physical games at all, play board games or RPGs.
Of course, nowadays plenty of card games can be played on a computer or phone (either against the computer, or against other players online); but I’ve never seen an electronic version of canasta.
I have had two different canast-apps on my phone at various times! I think one had an online play option. I just went against the AI.
Born during the Ford Administration, and I only learned the game six or so years ago, from my 50-something Canadian cousin. My mom knew how to play but had forgotten. It’s hard to find a foursome, I’ve found, and it’s not the easiest game to teach. Never seen a canasta deck.