The initial dealer shuffles the deck and the player to their right cuts it. To do so, every player is given a card from a shuffled deck and whoever receives the highest card becomes the first dealer. Set Upīefore the game begins an initial dealer must be chosen. If you are looking for cards to play Canasta with, check out a standard pack here or one of our more recent arrivals here. The objective of Canasta is for your team to reach 5000 points first.įor other Rummy type games, see our guides for Classic Rummy and Gin. (A typical game of Canasta in action) Card Game RulesĬanasta is a Rummy type game of melding that is played with two 52 playing card decks and two teams of 2.