Canasta is a rummy-family card game that is said to be a version of 500 Rum. Although there are various versions for two, three, five, or six players, the game is most often played by four people in two teams using two normal decks of cards. Players try to form melds of seven cards of the same rank and then "go out" by playing all of their cards. It is "the newest card game to reach classic status throughout the globe."
In an effort to construct a time-efficient game that was as entertaining as Bridge, attorney Segundo Sanchez Santos and his Bridge partner, architect Alberto Serrato, created Canasta in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1939. Before allowing Arturo Gomez Hartley and Ricardo Sanguinetti to test their game, they tested many formulae.
Canasta soon moved north across South America in a variety of forms to Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Argentina in the 1940s, after a favorable response at their local bridge club, the Jockey Club. Josefina Artayeta de Viel (New York) brought it to the United States in 1949, and it was dubbed the Argentine Rummy game by Ottilie H. Reilly in 1949 and Michael Scully of Coronet magazine in 1953. The Official Canasta Laws were written by the New York Regency Club in 1949/51 and published by the National Canasta Laws Commissions of the United States and Argentina in collaboration with game specialists from South America.
In the 1950s, Canasta became very popular in the United States, with several card sets, card trays, and manuals being manufactured. Canasta leagues and clubs still exist in numerous locations of the United States, despite the fact that interest in the game started to decrease there in the 1960s.
