How to play Pitch

Pitch is one of America's great kitchen-table card games. Depending on where you learned it, you might call it Setback, High-Low-Jack, Auction Pitch, or Smear. The version played on pitch.ac is classic 4-point Pitch, the form most families play, with a handful of house rules you can switch on before each game.

The goal is simple: be the first team to reach the target score, which is 11 points in a standard game. You earn points by capturing specific cards in tricks. Because every hand is only six cards long, a single game moves quickly, usually around ten to twenty minutes, and a bold bid can swing the score in one hand.

Pitch is always played as two sides. With 2 players it is a head-to-head duel. With 4 players you play in two partnerships of two, and partners sit across from each other so the turn order alternates between teams. Bigger tables work the same way: 6 players form two teams of three and 8 players form two teams of four, with teammates spaced around the table so no two partners play back to back.

On pitch.ac you can fill a table with friends, real players from matchmaking, or AI players. If a seat is empty when the host starts the game, an AI player takes it, so you never have to wait for a full table to begin.

Pitch uses a standard 52-card deck with no jokers. Aces are high and twos are low, so cards rank A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 within each suit.

The dealer shuffles and deals six cards to every player, at every table size. Even a full eight-player table only uses 48 of the 52 cards, so hand size stays consistent whether you are playing a duel or a party game. The cards left over are not used that hand, which matters: the jack of trump might not be in play at all, and that uncertainty is part of the game. The deal passes one seat to the left after each hand.

After looking at their cards, players bid in turn, starting with the player to the dealer's left. A bid is a promise that your team will win at least that many of the four points this hand. The legal bids are 2, 3, and 4, and each bid must be higher than the one before it. You can also pass. Each player gets one chance to bid, and the dealer always speaks last.

A bid of 4 is the boldest call in the game. Some tables call it a smudge or shooting the moon: you are promising to take High, Low, Jack, and Game, all in one hand.

If every other player passes, the dealer is stuck and must bid at least 2. This rule is known as stick-the-dealer, and pitch.ac always plays it so every hand is contested. As an optional house rule, the host can also allow the dealer to steal: with dealer-may-steal switched on, the dealer can take the bid by matching the current high bid instead of beating it.

The player who wins the bid is called the pitcher, and they lead the first card of the hand. Whatever suit they lead becomes trump for the rest of that hand. There is no separate announcement: the first card does the talking, which is where the game gets its name.

That means the pitcher should usually lead from their strongest suit, and often lead a high trump such as the ace or king to capture the High point immediately and pull trump out of the other players' hands.

Play moves clockwise. In the standard rule, if you hold a card of the suit that was led, you must either follow suit or play a trump. You are always allowed to trump in, even when you could follow. If you have no card of the led suit, you may play anything, including a trump or a throwaway card from another suit.

Hosts who prefer the stricter old-school rule can switch to strict follow-suit in the lobby. Under strict follow-suit you must play the led suit whenever you have it, and you may only trump when you are out of that suit.

A trick is won by the highest trump played. If no trump was played, the highest card of the led suit wins, and cards of other suits cannot win no matter how high they are. The winner of each trick leads the next one, and play continues until all six tricks have been played.

Four points are available every hand. High goes to the team that captures the highest trump in play. Low goes to the team that captures the lowest trump in play. Jack goes to the team that captures the jack of trump, but only if it was dealt. Game goes to the team whose captured cards add up to the most game points.

Because not every card is dealt, the highest trump in play might be a king or a queen, and the lowest might be a four. If the jack of trump is sitting unused in the deck, nobody scores Jack that hand. If both teams finish with exactly the same game-point total, nobody scores Game. So some hands are worth fewer than four points in total.

How Low is scored is a long-running family argument, so pitch.ac lets the host choose. In the default captured mode, Low goes to whichever team wins the trick containing the lowest trump. In played mode, Low goes to the player who played the lowest trump, even if an opponent won that trick.

The Game point is decided by counting the cards each team captured in its tricks. Only five ranks count: each ten is worth 10, each ace 4, each king 3, each queen 2, and each jack 1. Nines down to twos are worth nothing. Every suit counts, not just trump.

Tens are the cards to watch. A single ten is worth more than an ace and a king combined, so winning a trick that contains a ten often decides the Game point. Experienced players hold back a ten until they are sure their side will win the trick it falls into.

When all six tricks are played, each team counts the points it earned. The defending team, the side that did not win the bid, always keeps every point it captured.

The bidding team scores differently. If it earned at least as many points as it bid, it scores every point it took, including any extra. If it fell short, it is set back: the amount of the bid is subtracted from its score, and the points it did capture that hand do not count. A team can go below zero, which players call being in the hole.

This risk is the heart of Pitch. A bid of 2 is cheap to miss, while a failed bid of 4 costs four points and can turn a comfortable lead into a deficit in a single hand.

Here is a sample four-player hand. You bid 3 holding the ace, jack, and four of spades plus the ten of hearts, the king of clubs, and the six of diamonds. You lead the ace of spades, so spades are trump, and that ace is guaranteed to be the highest trump in play: the High point is yours as soon as the trick ends.

Later, your partner wins a trick with the queen of spades, and you drop your ten of hearts onto it, banking 10 game points. You hold the jack of spades until the opponents run out of trump, then win a trick with it and claim Jack. Your four of spades falls on an opponent's trick, but the two of spades was never dealt and your partner's three of spades lands in a trick your side wins, so the three is the lowest trump captured and your team takes Low.

At the end you count game points: your side holds 23 against the opponents' 14, so you also take Game. That is High, Low, Jack, and Game, four points on a bid of 3, and all four go on the scoreboard. Had you only taken two points, you would have lost 3 instead.

Hands continue, with the deal rotating, until a team reaches the target score. A standard game is played to 11. On pitch.ac the host can also choose a quick game to 7 or a long game to 21.

If both teams cross the target on the same hand, the bidding team wins. This rule rewards the side that took the risk, and it means a team near the finish line can sometimes win outright by bidding aggressively.

Every family seems to play Pitch a little differently, so the host can set these options in the lobby before the game starts: the target score (7, 11, or 21), whether the dealer may steal the bid by matching it, whether play uses suit-or-trump or strict follow-suit, and whether Low is scored as captured or played. Stick-the-dealer is always on.

Other regional versions add more scoring cards, such as the off-jack and joker in Smear or the two fives in Pedro and Cinch. Those variants are covered in the guides on the pitch.ac blog, but the games on pitch.ac use the classic 4-point rules described on this page.

Count your sure points before you bid. An ace of trump is a guaranteed High, and a long trump suit with the jack gives you a real chance at Jack and Game. A hand with one guaranteed point and a couple of maybes is usually a bid of 2, not 3.

Lead trump early when you are the pitcher. Pulling trump out of your opponents' hands protects your jack and makes your other high cards safe. As a defender, try to save a low trump so the pitcher cannot sweep Low.

Protect your tens. Throw them onto tricks your partner is already winning rather than leading them into an unknown trick. And watch the scoreboard: when the other team is one hand from winning, a bold bid can be your best defense.