Last Updated on July 7, 2026 by admin
Hand and Foot is the friendliest member of the canasta family — a partnership card game where every player gets two sets of cards: a “hand” you play first, and a “foot” you can’t even look at until the hand is gone. It’s easier to learn than classic canasta, plays 2 to 6 people, and a full game of four rounds fills an evening perfectly, which is why it has become one of America’s most popular family and retirement-community card games.
This guide covers everything you need to play tonight: setup, card values, how turns work, clean vs dirty books, the complete scoring chart, and the rules for different player counts.
Hand and Foot at a Glance
| Players | 4 (two partnerships) is standard; works for 2–6 |
| Decks | One more deck than the number of players — 5 decks with jokers (270 cards) for 4 players |
| Deal | Two stacks of 11 cards each per player: the Hand and the Foot |
| Goal | Meld cards into “books” of 7, empty your hand and foot first, score the most points |
| Game length | 4 rounds, roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours |
One thing to know upfront: Hand and Foot has no single official rulebook. It’s a folk game, and nearly every family plays slight variations. The rules below are the most widely played version — where common alternatives exist, we flag them so your table can agree before dealing. (The rule archive at Pagat.com documents dozens of regional variations if you’re curious how deep this goes.)
What You Need to Set Up
Cards: Shuffle together one more standard deck (jokers included) than you have players. For the classic 4-player game, that’s 5 decks — 270 cards. Yes, really. An automatic shuffler earns its keep in this game.
The deal: Each player receives two stacks of 11 cards. The first stack is the Hand — pick it up and look at it. The second is the Foot — it stays face-down in front of you, untouched, until you’ve played every card from your hand.
A popular alternative deal: every player grabs a clump of cards from the shuffled pile and tries to count out exactly 22 without looking twice — pull exactly 22 on the first try and some tables award a 100-point bonus. It’s a fun ritual, not a requirement.
The table: Remaining cards form the face-down stock in the middle. Flip the top card face-up beside it to start the discard pile (if it’s a three or a wild card, bury it and flip another). Partners sit across from each other.
Card Values in Hand and Foot
| Card | Point Value |
|---|---|
| Joker (wild) | 50 |
| Two / Deuce (wild) | 20 |
| Ace | 20 |
| 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K | 10 |
| 4, 5, 6, 7 | 5 |
| Black 3 (♣ ♠) | −5 (penalty card — discard only) |
| Red 3 (♥ ♦) | +100 laid on the table / heavy penalty if caught holding one (see Threes section) |
These values do double duty: they count toward your minimum opening meld, and they’re what you score (or lose) at the end of each round.
How to Play Hand and Foot: Turn by Turn
Play moves clockwise from the dealer’s left. On your turn:
- Draw two cards from the stock (or pick up from the discard pile — rules below).
- Meld if you can and want to: lay down sets of 3–7 cards of the same rank, or add cards to your partnership’s existing melds.
- Discard one card face-up to end your turn.
That’s the whole loop. The depth comes from what you meld and when.
Melding Rules
- A meld is 3 to 7 cards of the same rank, face-up on the table. Suits don’t matter.
- Melds belong to the partnership — you and your partner build the same piles.
- Jokers and 2s are wild and can fill in for any rank, but every meld must contain more natural cards than wild cards (so a 7-card book can hold at most 3 wilds).
- You can’t have two separate incomplete melds of the same rank — finish a book of kings before starting a new king pile.
- Threes can never be melded (with one going-out exception some tables allow — see Threes).
The Minimum Opening Meld (Rounds of 50, 90, 120, 150)
A full game is four rounds, and each round raises the bar for your team’s first meld:
| Round | Your Team’s First Meld Must Total |
|---|---|
| Round 1 | 50 points |
| Round 2 | 90 points |
| Round 3 | 120 points |
| Round 4 | 150 points |
You can lay down several melds at once to hit the number — three aces (60) opens round 1 alone; three aces plus three kings (90) opens round 2. Red threes and book bonuses never count toward the minimum.
This escalating structure is why players call the rounds “the fifty,” “the ninety,” and so on — and it’s what makes round 4 tense, because 150 points is genuinely hard to assemble while your opponents race ahead.
Picking Up the Discard Pile
Instead of drawing two from the stock, you may take the top 7 cards of the discard pile — but only if all of these are true:
- You hold two natural cards of the same rank as the top discard (a real pair — wilds don’t count for this),
- You immediately meld those two cards with the top discard,
- Your team has met the round’s minimum meld (or you meet it right now, counting the top card and your melded cards — the other six pile cards don’t count toward the minimum).
The pile is the biggest card-injection in the game, and fighting for it is where Hand and Foot is won — exactly as in classic canasta. If you know how to play canasta, this mechanic will feel instantly familiar; Hand and Foot just caps the pickup at seven cards instead of the whole pile.
Books: Clean vs Dirty (Red vs Black)
A completed meld of seven cards is a book (some tables say “pile” or “canasta”). Books come in two kinds, and the difference drives all the scoring:
- Clean book (red book): seven cards of the same rank with no wild cards — worth 500 points. Mark it by stacking it with a red card on top.
- Dirty book (black book): seven cards including 1–3 wilds — worth 300 points. Stack it with a black card on top.
Bonus points for books are scored in addition to the face value of the cards inside them. A clean book of kings is worth 500 (bonus) + 70 (seven kings at 10 each) = 570 points.
The Threes: Handle With Care
Threes are the trap cards of Hand and Foot:
- Black threes exist only to be discarded. They can’t be melded, they block nothing you meld onto, and each one caught in your hand or foot at round’s end costs −5. Some tables allow a meld of 3+ black threes (no wilds) as your final play when going out — agree in advance.
- Red threes are the game’s biggest swing. In the most common version, a red three drawn or dealt is placed face-up on the table immediately and replaced with a fresh card from the stock — worth +100 each. But get caught with a red three still in your hand or (worse) your unopened foot when someone goes out, and the penalty is brutal: −300 in most versions, and some families play −100 or even −500. Confirm your table’s number before round 1.
That foot risk is uniquely cruel: you can’t look at your foot, so a red three may be sitting in there costing you hundreds while you play on, oblivious. It’s the game’s signature moment of dark comedy.
Getting Into Your Foot
When you play the last card of your hand, you pick up your foot and keep going. Two ways it happens:
- Play through: you meld every card in your hand (no discard needed) — pick up your foot immediately and continue the same turn.
- Discard in: you meld all but one card and discard the last one — pick up your foot but wait until your next turn to play from it.
Reaching your foot before your opponents is a major tempo advantage: you’re 11 cards closer to going out while they’re still wading through their hand.
Going Out and Ending a Round
A round ends the moment one player goes out — gets rid of every card in both their hand and foot. To go out legally, you must:
- Have your partnership’s required books completed — the most common requirement is two clean books and two dirty books (many tables play one of each as a minimum; some escalate to more in round 4 — agree beforehand),
- Have a partner who has picked up their foot and played at least one turn from it,
- Ask your partner “May I go out?” — and their answer is binding, yes or no,
- End with a discard (most tables require it; some allow melding your final card).
The asking-permission rule isn’t just charming tradition — it’s real strategy, since your partner may be holding a monster foot worth one more circuit of the table. It’s also one of those table-manners moments where knowing proper card game etiquette keeps a family game friendly.
If the stock ever runs out before anyone goes out, the round simply ends and is scored as it stands (some tables reshuffle the discard pile instead — decide in advance).
Hand and Foot Scoring Chart
At the end of each round, each team adds up:
| Item | Points |
|---|---|
| Each clean (red) book | +500 |
| Each dirty (black) book | +300 |
| Going out | +100 |
| Each red three on the table | +100 |
| Face value of all melded cards | + (values chart above) |
| Cards left in any hand or foot | minus face values |
| Each red three caught in hand/foot | −300 (varies by table) |
Worked example: Your team ends round 2 with one clean book of tens (500 + 70 = 570), one dirty book of aces with two deuces (300 + 100 + 40 = 440), a partial meld of three 8s (30), a red three on the table (100), and you went out (100). Your partner’s foot was empty; total: 1,240 points. The opponents had one dirty book of 4s (300 + 20 + 25 = 345), but a hand caught holding a joker, an ace, and a red three (−50 −20 −300 = −370): total −25. That’s a normal Hand and Foot swing — and why nobody relaxes until the last discard.
Highest combined total after four rounds wins. Print a score sheet with columns for books, red threes, card count, and penalties — the arithmetic is the only hard part of the game.
Hand and Foot Rules for 2, 3, and 6 Players
- 2 players: head-to-head, no partners. Use 3 decks, deal 15 cards to each hand and foot (some play 11/11 with 3 decks). Going-out requirement is usually one clean and one dirty book, since books are slower to build alone.
- 3 players: cutthroat, everyone for themselves, 4 decks, 11/11 deal. Hand and Foot is genuinely one of the best games at this count — it made our list of the best 3-player card games for exactly that reason.
- 5 players: one team of three (rotating a sitter-out each round) versus a team of two, 6 decks.
- 6 players: two partnerships of three, partners alternating around the table, 7 decks (378 cards). Chaos, in the best way.
The deck formula holds throughout: decks = players + 1, jokers in.
Hand and Foot vs Canasta: What’s Different?
If you already play classic canasta, here’s the five-second conversion guide:
| Canasta | Hand and Foot | |
|---|---|---|
| Decks | 2 (108 cards) | Players + 1 (270 for 4p) |
| Cards per player | One 11-card hand | Two stacks: hand + foot |
| Draw per turn | 1 card | 2 cards |
| Discard pile pickup | Entire pile; freeze rules | Top 7 cards only; no freezing |
| Game structure | Play to 5,000 points | Exactly 4 rounds (50/90/120/150) |
| Red threes | +100 bonus | +100 on table, −300 if caught |
Hand and Foot trades canasta’s frozen-pile brinkmanship for the suspense of the hidden foot — most groups find it faster to teach and harder to sandbag. Bicycle’s rules page offers another mainstream version of Hand and Foot worth comparing if your group wants a second reference at the table.
6 Hand and Foot Strategy Tips
- Race to your foot. Meld aggressively early in the round — the sooner you’re playing from your foot, the sooner you threaten to go out, forcing opponents to meld defensively and eat penalties.
- But don’t strand your partner. If you burn every card reaching your foot while your partner sits on a full hand, your team can’t go out anyway. Balance speed with building shared melds they can dump into.
- Prioritize one clean book early. Clean books are worth 500 and are the going-out gatekeeper. Pick your deepest natural rank and protect it from wild-card contamination.
- Spend wilds on finishing dirty books, not starting melds. A deuce that completes a 7-card book converts 20 points into 320.
- Hold a natural pair for the pile. Just like in canasta, a pair in hand is a key to seven free cards. Discarding half of your only pair to save 10 points is the classic beginner leak.
- Round 4 changes everything. With a 150-point opening requirement, hoard high cards early in the round even if it feels slow — teams that can’t open in the fifty-point round of 150 routinely score negative and lose games they led for three rounds.
Hand and Foot FAQ
How many decks do you need for Hand and Foot?
One more deck than the number of players, jokers included: 3 decks for 2 players, 5 decks (270 cards) for the standard 4-player game, 7 decks for 6 players.
How many cards are dealt in Hand and Foot?
Each player gets two stacks of 11 cards — an 11-card hand played first, and an 11-card foot kept face-down until the hand is empty. Some groups deal 13 and 13; both are common.
What is the difference between a clean and dirty book?
Both are completed 7-card melds of one rank. A clean (red) book contains no wild cards and scores 500; a dirty (black) book contains 1–3 wilds and scores 300 — in both cases plus the face value of the cards inside.
Can you play Hand and Foot with 2 players?
Yes. Use 3 decks, deal each player a 15-card hand and 15-card foot (or 11/11), and reduce the going-out requirement to one clean and one dirty book. All other rules are unchanged.
What happens if you get caught with a red three?
A red three left in your hand or foot when an opponent goes out costs a heavy penalty — −300 in the most common version, though tables play anywhere from −100 to −500. On the table, each red three is worth +100. Agree on the number before the game starts.
How do you win Hand and Foot?
Highest total score after four rounds wins. Points come from completed books (500 clean / 300 dirty), melded card values, red threes, and the 100-point going-out bonus, minus everything caught in hands and feet.
Is Hand and Foot the same as Canasta?
It’s a canasta variant, not the same game. Hand and Foot uses more decks, deals two stacks per player, draws two cards per turn, caps pile pickups at seven cards, and runs exactly four rounds — see the comparison table above for the full breakdown, or our complete canasta rules guide to learn the original.
Final Thoughts
Hand and Foot earns its popularity honestly: the rules fit on one page, the four-round structure gives every game a built-in arc, and the hidden foot guarantees at least one groan-out-loud red-three disaster per evening. Settle your table’s variations before round 1 — the red-three penalty and the going-out book count are the two that start arguments — and deal the cards.
House rule worth adopting from night one: whoever loses shuffles all 270 cards for the next game.
