Cesta, the shared-basket canasta variant

Field notes

The game borrows the discard-pile decisions and going-out judgment of canasta while removing several layers of bookkeeping, including changing minimum melds and multiple special-three rules. Its central mechanism is deliberately adversarial: both players build the same twelve rank baskets, and the seventh card awards the basket to the player who completes it. Scores distinguish natural baskets from those containing wild cards, and matches continue to 3,000 points.