Pitch (Auction Pitch / Setback)
Pitch is the classic American partnership trick-taking game. Four players bid for
the right to name trump, then fight over four points: High, Low, Jack,
and Game. Bid well and you climb; bid too high and you go in the hole.
Objective
Be the first partnership to reach 11 points.
Setup
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Players: Four, in fixed partnerships. Partners sit across from each other —
seats 1 & 3 are Team 1, seats 2 & 4 are Team 2.
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Deck: A standard 52-card pack, aces high.
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Deal: Six cards to each player. The remaining 28 cards are not used this
hand.
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Dealer: Seat 1 deals the first hand; the deal passes clockwise afterward.
The first deal rotates between games: seat 1 deals the first game, seat 2 the
next, and so on round the table.
Turn Structure
Each hand runs through four stages.
1. Deal
Six cards to each player.
2. The auction
Starting to the dealer's left and moving clockwise, each seat either bids or
passes.
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The minimum bid is 2; the maximum is 4.
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Each bid must be higher than the current high bid.
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A pass is permanent — once you pass you are out of the auction for the hand.
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A bid of 4 cannot be beaten, so it ends the auction immediately.
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The dealer does not get to steal the bid by matching it.
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If all four players pass, the dealer is stuck with a bid of 2.
3. Naming trump
The high bidder names one suit as trump, then pitches — leads to the first
trick. The pitcher must lead a trump.
At a table, naming trump and pitching are the same act: the bidder simply leads
a card and whatever suit it is becomes trump. Gameweave asks for the suit
explicitly so the choice is clear to everyone, then requires the opening lead to
be a trump, which comes to the same thing.
4. Playing the tricks
Six tricks are played.
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Follow suit if you can — but you may play a trump at any time, even when
you could follow suit.
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If you cannot follow suit and choose not to trump, you may discard anything.
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The highest trump wins the trick. If no trump is played, the highest card of the
led suit wins.
•
The winner of each trick leads to the next.
Scoring — the four points
Every hand awards up to four points. Since all 24 dealt cards are played, the
cards each partnership captures decide every point.
1.
High — the highest trump in play, awarded to the partnership that
captures it. Aces are high.
2.
Low — the lowest trump in play, awarded to the partnership that
captures it. Note this is the side that wins the trick containing it, which
is not necessarily the side that was dealt it.
3.
Jack — the jack of trump, awarded to the partnership that captures it.
Only 24 of 52 cards are dealt, so the jack of trump is often not in play at
all. When it is not, this point is simply not awarded.
4.
Game — awarded to the partnership with the most captured card value:
All suits count, not just trump. If both partnerships tie on card value, the
Game point is not awarded.
Making the bid, and setback
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If the bidding partnership takes at least as many points as it bid, it adds
every point it captured to its score.
•
If it falls short, it is set: it subtracts its bid from its score. A
partnership's score can go negative — that is being "in the hole."
•
The defending partnership always scores every point it captured, whether the
bid was made or not.
Example. Team 1 bids 3 and takes only High and Low (2 points), while Team 2
takes Jack and Game (2 points). Team 1 is set: −3. Team 2 scores +2.
Winning
The first partnership to reach 11 points wins. Scores are only checked after a
hand is fully scored, so a hand always plays out to the end.
If both partnerships reach 11 on the same hand, the partnership with the higher
score wins; if they are exactly tied, the bidding partnership wins.
Not included
This version plays the core game. It does not include smudge (a bid of 5 to
take all four points), the dealer's steal-the-bid privilege, ten-point Pitch,
Pedro, or other regional variants.