Printable Hand and Foot Score Sheet

Hand and Foot inherits Canasta's meld-and-bonus scoring but adds its own twist: every player gets two separate stacks of cards (a "hand" played first, then a "foot" picked up afterward), and a sheet needs to track melds across both without conflating them, on top of the same kind of large flat bonuses that make Canasta-family scoring distinctive.

Card point values, and why they apply everywhere

Every card carries a fixed value whether it's melded or still sitting in a player's hand or foot: jokers count 50, 2s and Aces count 20, 8s through Kings count 10, and 4s through 7s count 5 — with 3s handled specially (see below). These same values apply in two different places on the sheet: added for cards successfully melded, and subtracted for cards left unmelded in hand or foot at the end of the round, which is why a clean layout keeps those as two distinct entries rather than one blended number.

Books: red and black, and why they're flat bonuses

A completed "book" of seven or more matching-rank cards scores a large flat bonus on top of the card points already counted: 500 for a clean (red) book with no wild cards, 300 for a dirty (black) book containing wild cards. Because these bonuses don't scale with the rank melded, a book of low cards is worth exactly as much bonus as a book of high cards — only the card-point total underneath differs.

Red threes: a bonus that can flip to a penalty

Red threes score 100 points each when melded face-up (400 for collecting all four), but only if the player has melded something else that round — a player who never melds turns their red threes into a matching negative instead. This swing is large enough that it deserves its own dedicated box on the sheet, the same way it does on a Canasta sheet, rather than being buried in the general card-point total.

The going-out bonus, and finishing both hand and foot

A player must complete their hand entirely, move into their foot, and complete at least one book from their foot before they're allowed to go out — going out then scores a 100-point bonus on top of everything else. Because a player can't go out at all until they've worked through both stacks, the sheet should note when a player has moved from hand to foot, since it changes what "going out" is even possible from that point forward.

Reading a finished round's total

A clean round total adds: card points from every completed meld, plus book bonuses (500 or 300 each), plus or minus red-three points, plus the 100-point going-out bonus for whoever finished, minus the point value of every card left in each opponent's hand and foot combined — not just whichever stack they happened to be playing from when the round ended.

Deal size, meld requirements, and how the hand-to-foot transition works are all explained on the full Hand and Foot rules page. Worked round totals live separately on the scoring deep-dive. An early go-out attempt is the single most argued moment in this game, and the dispute page covers how tables typically rule on it.

Do cards left in an unplayed foot count against a player the same as cards left in hand? Yes — if a round ends before a player has even opened their foot, every card still sitting in that unopened foot counts against them at full value, exactly like cards left in hand. The foot being untouched doesn't protect it from scoring against the player.

Can a player go out without completing a black (dirty) book at all? Rules vary by table, but most require at least one completed book of any kind (red or black) from the foot before going out is allowed — a table using stricter house rules may specifically require a clean book; worth confirming before the first round starts.

Hand and Foot belongs to the rummy-and-canasta family indexed on this site's Card Games category hub.