Auction Pitch

Auction Pitch is a card game played with a standard deck and is a member of the All Fours family that descended from the English card game All Fours, played in most former English colonies, especially the West Indies. It is the legacy of All Fours that gives us the name “jack” for the card previously known as the knave, and other members of the family include All [Page 47]Fives, California Jack, and Cinch. Spoil Five is a close relation, with similarly unusual rules.

The name All Fours comes from the scoring system, which awards points in four categories: the highest trump in play, the lowest trump in play, the Jack (given to the player who takes the Jack in a trump), and the Game (given to the player who takes the highest value of tricks). An amalgam of point-trick games and shorthand games like Euchre, All Fours dates from about the middle of the 17th century and may have been adapted by the English from a Dutch game. Typically a low-class gambling game for most of its history, it was introduced to the United States in the 18th century and became the most popular card game by the 1800s.

In the middle of the 19th century, the rapid ascendancy of Poker threatened All Fours' dominance of American card playing, and variants of the game developed quickly in response. Auction Pitch was originally called Commercial Pitch and is sometimes known as Sell-Out, and differed from All Fours in that there is no turn-up phase. Instead, the first card played—pitched—determines the trump suit and is sold to the highest bidder for points. The game is usually played by four, but it can accommodate two to seven players.