The Great Canasta Battle

Will and I went over to the Italian's for dinner tonight and had some delicious barley soup and a second course of beef stew and mash, and a third course of a stunning chocolate cake. Instead of the usual Game of Life, the Italian and her lovely husband, B, introduced us to Canasta.

We attempted to read the directions in Italian and made complete @sses out of ourselves, butchering the language. Once they stopped crying from laughing at us so hard, they explained to us how the game is played.

Played in partners, we chose sides: my partner was B and the Italian played with the Brit, so it was like a Europe vs America kind of game. The object of the game is to get a series of cards all the same rank (all 7s or 10s etc) while getting the most points possible. I am sorry to say that the Americans lost.

While there is not supposed to be any table talk, the Europeans blatantly ignored this rule and conferred about which cards to lay down, what to discard, and when to close (meaning, go out). They won the first hand with something outrageous: 6,000+ points. You only need 10,000 to win the whole game. It was down hill from there. With all the cheating going on, it is a wonder that we Americans did as well as we did, only losing by about 4,000 points in the end.

However, B and I have vowed that we will return and fight and win next weekend when we meet again for another go at the Great Canasta Battle of 2010....