I come from a pitch playing family. I learned how to play pitch at a young age, along with my sisters. At every family gathering we would (will) play pitch if we have enough people. Usually 13-point pitch, but a few years ago we started branching into 4-point pitch as well.
Even my nieces and nephews are learning and starting to play as well!
So after the winter holidays, Justin had the idea of creating a pitch game that just he and I could play, since we don’t live super close to my family and aren’t able to play often. We created a 4-point pitch, but Falter style. Ready for these trippy rules?
Point Cards:
- High
- Low
- Jack
- Game
We deal 12 cards to each person. From the leftover stack, we flip over the top card and that is trump.
If the first person is unable to bid, then it goes to the dealer. Now they could bid normally (2, 3, etc), but if they think they would most likely go set, they can bid 1. Now the ‘Dealer 1’ has to be made by getting Game. There have been times where the dealer hasn’t had any trump cards, but still made Game! It’s rather exciting. Once the bid has been ‘won’ then we discard 6 cards and only play with 6. You obviously have to keep all trump cards, but then you can determine what you want to keep. Sometimes it’s more beneficial to keep lower, zero point cards then jacks or tens to give you a better chance of making Game, so you don’t give the other person more points.
If anyone goes set, they don’t actually lose points. Instead it’s more of a ‘steal’ situation where the other person would then get the points that the bidder bid. So if I bid 2 but didn’t make it, my score doesn’t change but Justin would then get those 2 points that I bid for.
Another rule we made is that you can’t get more points than you bid for. So if I bid 2 and I got High, Low, and Game I wouldn’t get 3 points. I would only get 2. It helps keep things more fair so if you think you could actually get 3 points you have to bid accurately and take a higher risk.
We actually got really into this and we bought two sets of cards: Orange for Justin and Green cards for me! Whoever wins that night’s games will get to use their cards the next time we play. We’ve been playing this for almost a month now and I really don’t want to say this…. but we’ve only played with green cards once.
It’s been really really brutal on me.
If anyone decides to play, let me know how it goes!
Love, Alison.
