Pidro compared to other card games.

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Do the cards matter in card games?

If you are to believe the number of shareware card games today you may think that the only card game in the world is Poker. However, there is more to card games than that, as a matter of fact there is an infinite number of ways to use the same deck.

In general card games can be categorized depending on whether the cards themselves matter or whether the psychology is the key.

Bridge is at one extreme of the spectrum. The cards definitely matter and your skill in evaluating them and playing them in the correct order in the correct situation is crucial for your success. Poker and many other betting games, are on the other extreme. In some cases the cards actually may not matter at all and the psychology rules supreme. One could say, with the peril of grave oversimplification, that in trick taking games the cards matter and in betting games they do not.

Pidro is a game that combines both aspects in a clever way. The game has a history starting from All Fours, mutating into Pitch and further into Pedro and it’s many variants, of which Pidro is one. Pidro is a four person game played pair against pair.

The main characteristic of this line of games is trick taking with a twist. Trick taking determines who wins but it is not the number of tricks that matter but the point cards taken in the trick that count. The psychology aspect comes from bidding. Each player bids the number of points he thinks his team will be able to take at least. After one round of bidding the highest bidder chooses the trump for the trick taking phase of the game.

Experienced players somtimes say that during the bidding the cards do not matter that much at all, it is more a question of reading your opponents and pushing them into bad decisions just like a gambler would do when performing his art. Home