How many cards make a canastra?

Seven. A meld of three to six cards is worth the face value of its cards and nothing more. On the seventh card it becomes a canastra and earns a bonus of its own.

Why is a clean canastra worth more than a dirty one?

Because it uses no wildcard, and wildcards are scarce. With the same seven cards, clean scores 200 and dirty scores 100.

Do cards left in my hand count against me?

Yes. When the hand ends, whatever you are still holding is subtracted at the same face values, so a hand full of aces and kings is expensive.

Buraco scoring, card by card

Two things are added up when a hand ends. The cards you put on the table, at their face value, and the bonuses your canastras and your batida earned. Whatever is still in your hand is taken off again.

Before you sit down: the game still opens in Portuguese. The numbers below are the ones the table plays with, and the score sheet reads without much language, but we would rather say it now than after you arrive.

Open the game

What each card is worth

Ace: 15 points.
Two: 10 points, and it also acts as a wildcard.
Three to seven: 5 points each.
Eight to king: 10 points each.
Joker: 50 points, in the variants that are dealt with jokers. Open buraco is dealt without them, and there the two is the only wildcard.

These values run both ways. A card you have melded counts for your side; the same card still in your hand at the end is subtracted. That is why a late ace is a heavy thing to be holding.

Clean and dirty canastras

A canastra is a meld of seven cards or more. It is clean when it is built from natural cards alone, and it scores 200. It is dirty when a wildcard stands in for a card you never had, and it scores 100.

A meld of three to six cards is not a canastra yet. It is worth the face value of its cards and nothing else, so a six-card meld sits one card away from being worth 100 or 200 points more.

The gap decides matches. Two clean canastras instead of two dirty ones is 200 points, which is usually more than the distance between the two sides at the end. Keeping a wildcard for the meld that genuinely will not close, rather than spending it on the first one that asks, is most of the craft.

If you arrived here from canasta or hand-and-foot, the word is doing different work: buraco melds sequences of one suit, so a clean canastra is a run of seven, not a set of seven equal cards.

The two rare ones

Above a clean canastra there are two more, and both need natural cards, so they turn up seldom. A full suited run from ace to king, thirteen cards with no wildcard, scores 500. Close that run with the second ace of the same suit, so it reads ace to king and back to the ace, and the fourteen cards score 1000. When one of those lands, it usually settles the match on its own.

Going out

Ending the hand is worth 100. It is not simply running out of cards: your side has to have taken its morto and to be holding a clean canastra before the last card leaves your hand. The conditions, and the order to do things in, are in going out in buraco.

There is a penalty on the other side of it: a side that reaches the end of the hand without ever having taken its morto loses 100. It is easy to forget, and it turns a close hand around on its own.

How far a match runs

A match is played across as many hands as it takes to reach the target. The lengths on offer are 1000, 1500, 2000 and 3000 points. When you play with other people through the lobby the target is fixed at 1500, so the first match anyone plays is a 1500 one. On a private, solo or offline table you pick the length yourself.

Frequently asked questions

How many cards make a canastra?: Seven. A meld of three to six cards is worth the face value of its cards and nothing more. On the seventh card it becomes a canastra and earns a bonus of its own.
Why is a clean canastra worth more than a dirty one?: Because it uses no wildcard, and wildcards are scarce. With the same seven cards, clean scores 200 and dirty scores 100.
Do cards left in my hand count against me?: Yes. When the hand ends, whatever you are still holding is subtracted at the same face values, so a hand full of aces and kings is expensive.

How many wildcards can reach the table at all depends on the deck you are dealt, and that is set out in how many cards buraco uses. For the deal, the morto and the run of a hand from the first card, start at the buraco rules guide.