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Head Hand And Foot For Everyone

I am not exactly sure the official rules on how to play Head Hand and Foot, but we play a version of the game that we were taught 😊. It is a fun canasta type card game that does not require a lot of strategy, so it is fun to play with everyone. Really you are just collecting matching sets of cards and pairing them up with partner sets. Some basic rules are as follows:

1) Plays in 4 rounds. Each round ends, once a person on a team finishes playing through their 3 decks of 11 cards. (Each deck being called Head, Hand, and Foot)
2) In order to play down a matching set of card you must have 3 or more matching cards.
a. You can pair cards with wild cards to match sets. 2 and Jokers are considered wilds.
i. You can not make sets of wilds. (So no sets of 2 or Jokers)
ii. You must have MORE natural cards than wilds. (4, 4, 2) works. (4, 2, 2) does not work, (4, 4, 2, 2) does not work
b. 3’s can never be matched. They can only be discarded.
3) Before you can lay down for the first time, one of the teammates must have the minimum requirements to meld.
a. 1st round, the matching sets laid down must be at least 50 points
b. 2nd round the matching sets laid down must be at least 90 points
c. 3rd round the matching sets laid down must be at least 120 points
d. 4th round the matching sets laid down must be at least 150 points
4) Turns consist of drawing 2 cards, playing cards if you can, and discarding one. Note: when going out (laying down your last card) you don’t have to discard.
a. You can pick up the cards from the discard pile instead of drawing 2 cards.
b. In order to do this you must have at least 2 cards that match the last card that was discarded in your hand.
c. You must take the top 8 cards when taking the cards from the discard deck.
5) Each card has a value.
a. 3 – 9 ( 5 points) - Note: red 3’s are negative 300 points
b. 10 – K (10 points)
c. A (15 points)
d. 2 (20 points)
e. Joker (50 points)
6) You can make canastas which are stacks of at least 7 or more cards. These stacks give extra bonuses.
a. If there are all natural cards in the deck this is considered a clean stack and is worth 500 points
b. If there are some wilds in the stack the stack is worth 300 points
c. Stacks of clean 7’s are worth 1000 points.
7) We allow everyone to discard all 3’s in your initial first hand of cards at the start of each round. Then you will need to draw back up to 11 cards. Note if you draw a 3 during the redraw you must keep it.

TTS version:
I wanted to be able to play with my family across the US, and I figured that there would be some complexities with TTS that would make it hard to play a game like this. So I really tried to write some scripts that would make the game easy to play for everyone. Even, those who don’t use computers as much. 😊 In order to make this easy to play it does make it were you have to play the game with some knowledge on how the scripts work. There are concepts that are built into the scripts that you will need to know. The Script will 1) calculate all the points at the end of each round, 2) let you look at the 8 cards before taking them, 3) keep tracks who’s turn it is, and 4) oh a real big is it will serve as a stand in player (computer player). We found that we wanted to play sometimes and we didn’t have an even number of players so I coded a computer player to play.

Things to note:
1) Everyone must be sitting at their location prior to starting game. Partners must sit across from each other. Partners will have a matching color board to play on. If you want a computer player to play you must click the silver button and that changes it to active. Once everyone is seated click the start round button
2) This is the point were everyone can discard 3’s. For every 3 discarded you must draw a new cards from the draw pile. (Do not click the Draw 2 button). The computer player will do this automatically
3) Once everyone is done and you are ready to start the round click the silver button by the draw pile. (This really is here to tell the computer player that everyone is ready to play)
4) At this point only use buttons to draw cards. ( This is how the script will keep track who’s turn it is ) This can be a long game so we had a family rule where you can draw a head if you like. The script will not let you draw too far ahead.
5) Play through the round and once someone plays their last card a sum round button will show up. (No one should move any cards at this point until the sum round button is clicked)
6) After the points are summed then everyone can look through the un-played cards and decks if they like. Then you click the clean up button
7) (repeat for 4 rounds)

Have fun.