Learn how to play pitch – a quick and easy card game for 3 to 8 people. Perfect for coffee shops and restaurants.

Pitch is a game my parents taught me as a child. It’s something they played when they were kids in Upstate New York. I learned it at the kitchen table in my grandparents’ cottage and have played many, many hands.
Since it can be played with 5 players, we tend to play pitch whenever my mom visits. We also play pitch while waiting for our food in restaurants or for a ferry to arrive. Since the hands are pretty quick, we can usually get through most of a game in under 20 minutes.
Like all traditional card games, there are a bunch of variations. It’s like borscht or tomato sauce, every family has its own way of doing things, and these are my family’s rules.
The Basics
Pitch is a trick-taking game for 3 to 8 players. It follows most of the usual trick-taking rules: follow the suit, aces high, highest card wins. There is just one change from the normal trick-taking rules.
–> You can trump anytime, even if you can follow the suit played.
This is because the goal of pitch isn’t to win the most tricks, but rather to win specific cards, including the lowest trump.
How To Play
1. Dealing
- Pitch is played with 3 to 8 players.
- Using a regular, 52 card deck, deal each player 6 cards, 3 cards at a time.
- Set aside the undealt cards. They will be shuffled back into the deck for the next hand.
2. Points
There are 4 possible points in each hand of pitch.
- Highest trump
- Lowest trump
- Game –> See below for calculation
- Jack of trump (this isn’t always dealt)
Game is calculated by winning the most high-value cards. The card value is calculated as aces = 4, kings = 3, queens = 2, jacks = 1, tens = 10. The suit doesn’t matter for calculating who wins game.
For example, someone who wins the ace and king of hearts and the jack of spades will have a score of 9. They will lose the game point to someone who has a single ten of diamonds.
3. Bidding
The trump suit is determined by bidding. Starting to the left of the dealer, each player can choose to bid or pass on choosing trump.
- There are three possible bids.
- A bid of 2 means that the player expects to get at least 2 of the possible 4 points.
- A bid of 3 means the player must get at least 3 of the points.
- Smudge means the player must get all of the tricks.
- Our family version doesn’t include a bid of 4, but some variations include it.
- The bid only goes once around the players and every bid needs to be higher than the previous bid, except for the dealer. The dealer has the option of matching the highest previous bid.
- If no one bids the hand is re-dealt.
4. Scoring
The game is played until a player reaches 10 points. Then the player with the highest score wins.
- The non-bidding players get whatever points they earned in a hand added to their total score. (Eg. if a non-bidding player wins low, they get 1 point).
- Whoever won the bid, must make at least the number of points they bid for. For example, if you bid 3, then you must get 3 points.
- If the bidding player makes more than 3 points, they still only get 3 points.
- If the bidding player gets less than 3 points, then they get -3 points added to their total score.
- This means that players can end up with a negative score overall. (I’m an ambitious bidder so this often happens to me).
- Someone can win by never bidding. (This is often Max’s strategy, but it doesn’t always work).
Leave a Reply