Set up
Canadian Salad can be played with 3,4,5, or 6 players using a standard 52-card deck. Cards rank from high to low A-K-Q-J-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2. All the cards are dealt out to the players.
Some cards may need to be removed from the deck so each player will have the same number of cards.
- For three players, remove the 2 of clubs, 17 cards each.
- For four players, no cards are removed, 13 cards each.
- For five players, remove the 2 of clubs and the 2 of diamonds, 10 cards each.
- For six players, remove the 2 and 3 of clubs and 2 and 3 of diamonds, 8 cards each.
Deal and play are clockwise. The first dealer is chosen by whatever method your group wishes.
What are you trying (not) to do?
The basic game consists of six hands, played in order, resulting in penalty points as follows.
- 1st hand. No tricks. Each trick won counts 10 points.
- 2nd hand. No hearts. Each hearts taken counts 10 points.
- 3rd hand. No queens. Each queen taken counts 20 points.
- 4th hand. No king of spades. The player who takes the king of spades in a trick scores 100 points.
- 5th hand. No last trick. The winner of the last trick scores 100 points.
- 6th hand. Combination of all the above. All scores from hands 1-5 count.
Play
The player to the left of the dealer leads any card to the first trick.
Players must follow suit if possible. A player who has no card of the suit led may play any card.
The player of the highest card of the suit that was led wins the trick and leads any card to the next trick.
There is no trump suit.
Scoring and Winning
At the end of each hand each player’s penalty points are recorded. After all six hands have been played the points are totaled. The player with least points is the winner.
Weird things that might happen
If two players are tied after a hand, two pegs will not fit in one hole. Just lay one peg beside the other and it will sort out when one of the players scores more points.
The scoring path goes to 500 points. That should be enough for most games. However, if someone has an extremely poor game, they could go past 500. if that is the case, they are definitely not going to win. Just continue play and don’t worry about that unlucky person’s points any longer. They are simply a spoiler for the other players for the rest of the game.