Hand and Foot

Guest post by Laura Dene

Our family loves to play the card game Hand and Foot, mostly for adults and older children, either teams or individuals. If you’ve ever played and liked canasta or card games where you make sets or runs of numbers, you’ll like Hand and Foot, as well. Each player chooses 22 cards and divides them into two piles of 11 cards each. One pile goes in the hand and must be played down to get to the pile on the table (the foot), which also must be played down, although you also have to draw every turn. If you empty both hand and foot first, you might win, if you have enough points. Points are awarded for sets and for strategies and for the use of wild cards. A lot depends on the luck of the draw, but there is quite a bit of strategizing. Do you play down your hand immediately, set by set, or do you wait until you can play it down all at once? Do you make sets of wild cards or use them to make sets of numbers? What are the other players doing? Oh, and those “Lady” cards can either wipe out your score or add points depending on what you do with them. All in all, the game makes for a fun evening.