Hand and Foot Card Game Rules (Tips And Strategies)

The hand and card game is Canasta’s variation. This Game is played using 4 / 6 standard Card decks. The Game can be played among four to six players by forming teams. Every player plays with dealing with two sets of cards. The first card set is called the Hand, while the second set of cards called the Foot.

Hand and Foot Card Game Rules for four players

In a four-player game, Two teams are formed of 2 players each. The Game is played using five decks of 54 cards each, which contains jokers. So in total, there are 270 cards.

One teammate deals the cards with 13 cards to each player. The first stack of cards is called Hand. Then Another teammate distributes deck with 13 cards to every player in the clockwise order. The second stack is called the Foot.

The remaining cards are kept in the center, facing down and form a stock. The topmost card in the Stock is kept facing up, and it should not be three red or a Joker.

The Foot stack of the card cannot be used until all the Hand cards have been used.

Meld Cards Objective

Melding is getting rid of all the hands of a team. 3-7 cards set is MeldMeld. Melds can have maximum of seven cards and minimum three cards. Any card can be MeldMeld, for example, Ace, Queen, King, and so on. Jokers, Deuces cards cannot be melded.

There are three types of MeldMeld:

Dirty MeldMeld is when players have two or more(when there are six or more melds) wild cards.
Natural Meld is having Clean Melds without any wild card.
Wild MeldMeld is a meld of only wild cards.

A seven cards meld is called a Pile. Red top card pile is a natural pile, a joker for a wild pile. The blacktop card is for a dirty pile. Players earn points for their melds, and players lose points on the left cards.

When a player has to get rid of all the cards he needs to :

A teammate needs to have picked “Foot.”
A team needs to have accomplished Natural Melds, that’s is two dirty melds and two wild melds (each MeldMeld should have seven cards or more)
All the team members need to agree for melding all of the cards.

Cards

Points

Deuces and Aces

20 points each

Wild Card (Joker)

50 points each

4-7

5 points each

8-K (Eight up to King)

10 Points each

Black Threes

5 Points each

Round Points

This Game has a total of 4 rounds, and there are two variations of playing this Game, which is as follows.

50-90-120-150

1st Round

50 Points

2nd Round

90 Points

3rd Round

120 Points

4th Round

150 Points

50-100-150-200

1st Round

50 Points

2nd Round

100 Points

3rd Round

150 Points

4th Round

200 Points

Bonus Points

Bonus Points are given when entire piles are made and also the degree of hands within the pile. Teams that “Go Out” before all also score bonus points. Placing three reds facing up along with melds will give a chance of scoring +100 points, but if other player goes out first you can lose 100 points

Hands

Bonus Points

Each Red Three

50 points each

Scoring Go Out

100 Points each

Dirty Pile (seven cards)

300 Points each

Clean Pile (seven cards)

500 Points each

Wild Pile (seven cards)

1500 Points each

How to Play?

After dealing with the hands, a player on the left of the dealer will commence playing in a clockwise order, and this will continue as long as someone gets rid of all the cards.

After the first turn, players need to replace any face-up red three with equivalent cards.

There are certain rules for drawing cards:

Players have to Either add melds(to partnership)ormeld cards.
The first two cardsare drawn from the top stack.
the top card should not be picked from a discard pile.

If a red three-card is picked, it needs to be replaced.

A maximum of seven cards can be drawn from the pile. The player can take the entire pile if there are less than seven cards.

Requirements for replacing the cards.

There should be a minimum of two cardshaving the same rank.
The card cannot be a three.
The top card and the two cards that are held player needs to meld them.

Drawing cards and melding the card by discarding will complete the first turn. You earn 50 points on first MeldMeld.

Illustration:

Consider a fifty points round. A player sitting at your right has tossed out seven, and you are holding two cards of 7’s and one card of value 2.

The player can use only two cards of 7’s and can pick the top seven cards to create dirty MeldMeld. This will get fifty points. A team cannot have two partial MeldMeld having the same rank.

A single meld can only contain seven or fewer cards.

After completing, the player is allowed to make one more MeldMeld with three same rank cards with the topmost cards but not from the discarded pile.

Picking up Foot

After getting rid of the Hand, Team picks up the Foot. There are two ways of doing this.

when a team melds Hand cardsand picks up the Foot cards right after can carry on with their turn.
Or when all the cards are melded except one, choose to pick up the Foot card, and you can continue playing on the next turn.

How does the Game end?

The Game comes to an end if:

The player, after melding the Foot cards and discarding the last card, gets the permission of leaving.
After the Stock, the pile is over, and the player can drawcardsfrom it.

The whole team should be ready to Go by fulfilling the necessary terms. If anyone of the members denies leaving, the players cannot leave without zero cards.

At least two cards need to be kept after melding when playing from foot cards, one to discard and one to hold.

Every team scores points for melding, and none for cards left.

Variations

Dealing 11 cardsinstead of 13.
Turn only the top cardup.one hand card can be kept as Foot.
Player playing Foot can play with the top discard, and take up the whole pile rather than drawing only two cards from it. The player who takes the entire pile has a risk of black threes.
Player playing with foot cards can Pass or Float instead of discarding.