Canasta is a card game that I find to be a lot of fun. Sadly, many of today's kids don't learn about card games. They think that they're much to primitive and slow compared to their Sony Playstations or XBox's. Well, Canasta is a great game to play. It involves strategy, deception, and a whole lot of fun.

There are a number of variations on the rules of play, and I'll list some pointers to some places where you can read about other variations later. I learned many years ago from an elderly babysitter. My folks used to go to these business conventions twice a year, for about a week at a time, and so my brother and I were left in the care of this matronly old lady. She loved to play cards and dice games, and would bring an old pill bottle with her filled with 100 pennies. We'd play with her for the pennies. Well, it soon got to the point where I'd literally clean her out by the time she left when we'd play canasta. That was nearly 20 years ago.

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of Canasta players out there, so I didn't get to practice much until I found a fantastic version written for Windows by Mark-Jan Harte. His Canasta.Net site will let you download the latest version, as well as give you information on how to register it. He has recently revised the game so that not only can you play by yourself, but you can now play live over the Internet! This is a godsend for those of us who have been searching for Canasta partners or opponents. Coupled with ICQ, or another IM program to find opponents, you can easily find people ready to play with you.

Another canasta game now available is Canasis. The author of the program describes it as such:

"Canasis for Windows is a NEW online canasta card game. This canasta game has online playing, vivid graphics, sounds, animations and adjustable rules. Full sized cards, chat, robot opponents and 147,456 canasta rule variations. Windows 95/98. A strategy card game classic enhanced by random sounds, full scoring charts, game stats with highscore tracking. Challenging yet easy to learn with the instant help button. Free canasta card game download. Easy to install. Official canasta for tournaments tournaments."

Now, a method of ranking yourself has arrived with the Canasta Ladder. Case's Internet Gaming Ladder has recently added a Canasta Ladder. With this, you can now compete against others on the Internet, and report the results of the matches to become ranked. Soon you will be able to compare yourself to other players on the net, and discover how good (or bad) you really are. I have found this to be immense fun. I am no longer listed on the Canasta Ladder as I haven't played for a while, but I did attain the ranking of #2 at my highest point. Challenge me to a match if you'd like.

Yahoo now is offering both stand-alone Canasta as well as an automatic reporting ladder version of Canasta on their games system. I have just begun to play here, and find it quite fun. This is a java-based game so you need to have a more recent version of your web browser that can handle java code. Check out today!.