Pedro is an American trick-taking card game of the all fours family based on auction pitch. Its most popular variant is known as cinch, double Pedro or high five which was developed in Denver, Colorado, around 1885 and soon regarded as the most important American member of the all fours family. Although it went out of fashion with the rise of auction bridge,. it is still widely played on the western coast of the United States and in its southern states, being the dominant game in South Louisiana. Forms of the game have been reported from Nicaragua, the Azores, Niobe NY, Italy, and Finland.. The game is primarily played by four players in fixed partnerships, but can also be played by 2–6 individual players.
Pedro uses a regular pack of 52 cards, but some variants add a joker called the Dom, hence the name Dom Pedro. The game is much simpler than pitch, in that all points are awarded to the winners of the tricks containing certain specific cards. This includes the game point, which goes to the winner of the trump ten. The winner of the Pedro (five of trumps) receives 5 points. In cinch or Double Pedro the same holds for the Left Pedro (off-five), which counts as a trump. The practice of making sure to win a trick that contains a high-scoring card is referred to as cinching.
Cinch (double Pedro, high five) The following rules are based on Foster's Complete Hoyle of 1897 and are very similar to the modern Bicycle rules.
+ Card values (trumps only) Rank A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 Off-5 4 3 2 Value 1 — 1 1 — 5 5 — 1 The game is played with a standard pack of 52 cards. The cards are ranked in the usual order, from aces, kings, queens etc. down to twos. As a special case, the off-Pedro, i.e. the non-trump five which is of the same color as trumps, is for all purposes considered to be a member of the trump suit ranking between the Pedro (five of trumps) and the four of trumps. AK2: 12
Like pitch, cinch is a point-trick game, i.e. for winning the trick play one needs to maximize the total value of the cards won in tricks, rather than the number of tricks won. But in cinch (and in Pedro in general) the original card-points were abolished in favor of directly assigning game points to the cards. As a result of this process, only six of the fourteen trumps carry card-values, while the plain suit cards do not score at all.
The first dealer is decided by cutting.Aces are high for cutting as in game-play. The dealer shuffles the pack, and the player to the dealer's right cuts. Nine cards are dealt to each player in batches of three.
Beginning with the eldest hand, each player gets one chance to bid for the privilege of declaring the trump suit. A bid is the number of points that the bidder's party undertakes to win in the deal, the minimum bid being 1 or in some variations, 6. Each player must make a higher bid than any previous player, or pass. The highest possible bid is 14.According to the Chicago rules, if all other players pass the dealer must bid, but at a minimum bid of 1 this case appears to be purely hypothetical, and neither Foster nor Bicycle mention it.The phase consisting of discarding and taking up new cards is known as wash and fill.
When the highest bidder has announced the trump suit, starting with eldest hand each player in turn discards at least three cards face up. The dealer fills each player's hand up to six cards. In the four-player partnership version the dealer's own hand is filled up by robbing the pack: The dealer chooses the cards freely from the remaining stock, and if any trumps remain in the stock discards them openly.
Any scoring trumps discarded by the opponents are counted for the highest bidder's party.
The highest bidder leads to the first trick and need not lead a trump. The standard rules for card play in trick-taking games hold, with one exception: It is always allowed to trump instead of following suit ("follow suit or trump"). As usual, the highest card of the suit led wins each trick, unless a trump is played, in which case the highest trump played wins. The winner of a trick leads to the next trick.
Both parties count the card-points in their tricks. If the bidding party keeps the contract, i.e. wins the required number of card-points, the party that won more card-points scores the difference. Otherwise the opponents score their own result plus the value of the bid.Scoring according to Foster. According to the Bicycle rules opponents score 14 points plus the gap between the bid and the bidding party's result. This is more if not all 14 points were in play.
Sixty-three + Card values (trumps only) Rank A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 Off-5 4 3 2 Joker Value125—119—55—151N/A—15 This variant of the four-player game combines King Pedro (very high card-value of 25 for the trump king) and Pedro Sancho (card-value of 9 for the trump nine), and also gives a card-value of 15 to a low trump, resulting in an overall score of 63 points in the pack. The game can be played with a Joker, in which case it is the lowest trump and scores 15. Otherwise the three of trumps scores 15. After the bidding, which can go over several rounds, each player is dealt 4 more cards. (Thus all cards are dealt or exactly one card remains, depending on whether the Joker is in use.) Players discard down to six cards as usual. The game is played for 152 points.
In eighty-three, a variant reported from Maine, the queen of trumps also has a card-value of 20. Players are dealt 12 cards each, leaving a kitty of 4–5 cards (depending on whether there is a joker). Minimum bid is 30, and the highest bidder receives the kitty. Players discard down to six cards, subject to the usual restrictions (no trumps, no scoring trumps). The first card led need not be a trump.
History The original game of Pedro, which developed in the nineteenth century from auction pitch, did not have partnerships (so from four to seven could play). It also did not use the "off-suit" Pedro or have a second deal. There was only one round of bidding. In keeping with the game's descent from all fours, the ace of trumps was called "high", the two was called "low", and the ten was called "game". The nine of trumps, called "sancho", was worth nine points.
A variant called Dom Pedro or Snoozer counted the three of trumps as three points and used the joker, called the snoozer, which ranked as the lowest trump and counted fifteen points.
The modern games described above are based on a variant called Cinch, Double Pedro, or High Five, which arose in Denver, Colorado, around 1885. Cinch was usually played in partnerships and included the second pedro (called "left pedro") and the second deal (the dealer's part of which was called "robbing the pack"). The joker was not used and the nine and three did not count. The name came from the necessity for the third player to each trick to "cinch" it, that is, play a trump higher than the five (unless one had already been played to the trick) so the fourth player could not make a pedro.
In Jack London's short story "The Unexpected," the main characters spend the long winter evenings in Alaska playing "endless games of whist and pedro."
Around 1900, Cinch, Whist, and Euchre were the most popular card games for serious players, though auction bridge (introduced in 1904) replaced them. As of 1956, Cinch was still considered "one of the top-ranking games of skill". It had bidding conventions for the first bidder to give information to his or her partner, such as: with a pedro, bid 5; with an ace and three or four cards in the same suit, bid 6; with an ace-king, bid 7 (Morehead, Frey, and Mott-Smith 1956).
Variations Most variations involve differences in the point assignments.
California Pedro
+ Card values (trumps only) Rank A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 Off-5 4 3 2 Value 1 — 3 1 — 5 5 — 1
The players are each dealt nine cards, three at a time, after which bidding begins to the right of the dealer with the lowest possible bid being 6. If a player does not wish to bid, they "pass" the bid onto the next player. When the bidding comes back around to the dealer, the highest bid gets to call the suit. If a team does not make their bid their point total is negatively affected by the bid amount. When the suit has been called, players discard all non-suited cards (except the other five, or pedro, of the same color). Some play that a discarded trump can be grabbed by any player but I have seen rules that say no. This is to keep players from discarding low trump in hope of a better one. Also the 2 of trump stays with whomever has it. Making 16/32 very difficult. Then they are dealt the number of cards needed to reach 6. When the deal comes back around to the dealer, the dealer then sorts through the remaining deck and picks out the cards he needs to bring their hand up to 6. If there are more than 6 suited cards remaining in the deck, the dealer can take all of them but must reduce the number of cards in his hand to 5 on the first play. In order to win the game a team must have 52 or more points as well as claim and make the bid.
Also unique to California Pedro is that when a player bids 16 and makes the bid that total is doubled to equal 32 as a bonus, because it is so rare. One unofficial rule of California Pedro is no "table talk". In other words, no player is allowed to make subtle hints of his/her hand to their respective teammate in relation to their bid or potential play. There is no official penalty for "table talk" and it is loosely enforced at best.
One variation of California Pedro has the J worth 1 point. The total trump cards add up to 14.
Another variation of California Pedro allows a team to "Shoot [for] the moon." They must make a 14 point bet. If they don't take 14 points, they lose the game. If they do, they win the game. Often done when one team is down and the other team is about to win.
Five-handed Pedro Five-Handed Pedro is a variation whereby five people can play the game at once, with no dedicated partners. The game begins with the dealer dealing all but two cards in a clockwise fashion to each of the five players, for a total of ten cards each. The remaining two cards are set aside until later. Bidding commences from the dealer's left, with bids ranging from 6-16 points. The player who wins the bid is immediately given the two remaining deck cards, and must then call a trump suit. Players then discard, retaining all trump cards and any number of distrump cards necessary to arrive at a total of six cards in their hand. In the event a player has more than six trump, he or she retains all of his trump, playing the lowest non-point cards (3, 4, 6, etc.) concurrently with each hand until the extras are gone.
After the discard, the winning bidder places his lead card in the center of the table, and asks for another card not in his hand. The player who holds this card throws it into the center of the table, and these two are partners until the next deal, as are the remaining three players partners. Play then continues as in traditional Pedro, with the caller and partner needing to win enough points to equal their bet. Failure to do so results in a loss of points equal to the bet, regardless of any points earned during the hand.
Play continues until one player reaches 104 points.
Lipton variation (Canadian prairies) +Card values (trumps only)RankAKQJOff-jack1095Off-52Value120— 111— 551 A variation of the game commonly known as "King Pedro" is played in Saskatchewan, in the area of Regina but associated most strongly with the village of Lipton.
The Lipton variation uses a reduced deck of 32 cards, which includes all aces and face cards, but only the 10, 9, 5, and 2 from the numeric cards. All 4 players are dealt 7 cards each hand, with the remaining 4 cards left over forming a "missy" (similar to the kitty in the Sixty-Three variant above), from which the winning bidder may then pick up or discard as they choose (while maintaining a 7-card hand).