How to play Hand and Foot
Hand and Foot is North America's favourite Canasta variant: every player gets a 13-card hand plus a face-down 13-card foot that only opens once the hand is played off. Five full decks - 270 cards - go into the shuffle. You partner with Steinunn against Arnar and Hrafn, melds belong to the partnership, and the match runs exactly four deals with rising first-meld minimums of 50, 90, 120 and 150 points.
A turn is simple: draw two from the stock (or take the top seven discards if you can immediately meld the top card with two matching cards from your hand), meld what you like, and discard one. Melds are sets of three to seven equal cards - aces down to fours - with twos and jokers as wilds, as long as naturals outnumber wilds two to one. A completed seven-card meld is a pile: clean piles (no wilds) bank 500, dirty piles 300, and the all-wild pile a huge 1,500.
Going out takes planning: your team needs two clean piles, two dirty piles and one wild pile, your partner must already be playing from their foot, and you must ask their permission - their answer is binding. Everything left in hands and feet counts against you, so a stranded foot full of aces hurts.
Strategy tips
- Race to your foot. Thirteen unseen cards are thirteen liabilities. Meld aggressively early - even cheap melds - to play your hand off and open the foot before the opponents find their rhythm.
- Build the wild pile early. The 1,500-point wild pile is both the biggest bonus on the table and a hard requirement for going out. Feed spare twos and jokers into it steadily instead of dirtying your clean melds.
- Keep pairs for the pile. Two matching cards in hand turn the top discard into a seven-card windfall. Hold pairs of ranks your right-hand opponent likes to throw.
- Block with black threes. A black three on the discard pile locks it for the next player. Spend them when the opponent to your left is visibly collecting.
- Watch the round number. A 150-point opening in round four is a real hurdle - hold aces and jokers together so one turn can clear it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Hand and Foot and Canasta?
Hand and Foot deals every player TWO sets of cards: the hand you start with, and a face-down foot you may only pick up after playing off every hand card. It uses five decks (270 cards), you draw two cards per turn instead of one, take up to seven discards instead of the whole pile, melds are capped at seven cards, and going out requires two clean piles, two dirty piles and one all-wild pile. Canasta uses two decks, one hand each and a freezable discard pile.
How do you get into your foot?
Two ways. If you meld every card in your hand, you pick up your foot immediately and keep playing the same turn. If you meld all but one card and discard that last card, you pick up the foot but must wait until your next turn to play from it. Reaching the foot early is most of the strategy - all thirteen foot cards count against your team if an opponent goes out first.
What are clean, dirty and wild piles?
A pile is a completed meld of exactly seven cards. A clean (red) pile has no wild cards and scores a 500-point bonus; a dirty (black) pile contains one or two wilds and scores 300; a wild pile is seven twos and jokers and scores 1,500. To go out, your team needs at least two clean piles, two dirty piles and one wild pile.
How many wild cards can a meld contain?
A meld must always have at least twice as many natural cards as wilds: melds of three to five cards may hold one wild, melds of six or seven may hold two. The all-wild meld is the exception - it is built entirely from twos and jokers, and completing it as a seven-card pile is required before your team can go out.
How does taking the discard pile work in Hand and Foot?
Instead of drawing two from the stock you may take the top SEVEN cards of the discard pile (or all of it if fewer remain). You must hold two natural cards matching the top discard and meld the three immediately - and a three on top blocks the pile entirely. If your team already has an incomplete meld of that rank, you must be able to complete the seven-card pile and still start a fresh meld of at least three.
What do red threes and black threes do?
Neither can ever be melded. Red threes are bonus cards: lay them out the moment you get one and draw a replacement - each is worth +100 laid out, but -100 if one is caught in a hand or an unopened foot when the round ends. A black three discarded on the pile blocks the next player from picking it up; black threes left in hand cost 5 points each.
How long is a game of Hand and Foot?
Exactly four deals, with rising first-meld minimums: 50, 90, 120 and 150 points. Scores carry across the deals, and whichever partnership has the higher total after round four wins the match. This version plays the classic partnership game for four: you and Steinunn against Arnar and Hrafn.
More games like this
Love the meld-and-race rhythm? Classic Canasta is the two-deck original, Burraco is Italy's sequence-based cousin with its own pozzetto (a foot by another name), and Rummy 500 rewards the same discard-pile digging in a faster two-player frame.