Pedro (card game)
| Origin | United States |
|---|---|
| Alternative names | Pidro, Petro, '"Pedro"' |
| Type | Trick-taking |
| Players | 2×2 |
| Skills required | Memory, attention |
| Cards | 52 cards |
| Deck | Anglo-American |
| Play | Clockwise |
| Card rank (highest to lowest) | A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 Pedro 4 3 2 (trump) |
| Playing time | 20 minutes |
| Random chance | Easy |
| Related games | |
| All Fours, Pitch, Cinch, Phat | |
Pedreaux (pronounced "peedro") 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. Developed in Denver, Colorado, in the 1880s, it was soon regarded as the most important 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 some locations in Louisiana. Forms of the game have been reported from Nicaragua, the Azores, 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. The game is considerably simplified when compared to 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.
The following rules are based on Foster's Complete Hoyle of 1897 and are very similar to the modern Bicycle rules.
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.
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. 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.
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