Game 25: Pedro


Again, it's hard to get an "accurate" count of games for reasons laid out in other posts.  One of the hardest decisions on count has to do with card games.  We love them.  We have lots of decks (100 or so?) on our shelves, so it seems only fair to count at least a handful of card games that are among our very favorites.  Pedro is one of these.

I know Pedro as a game that is played among the Azorean (Portuguese) population of California's central valley.  (I imagine it may be played under other names or in other formats elsewhere.)  This is my heritage on my dad's side of the family.  My dad tells stories of his grandfathers playing this game, and I grew up playing it.  I remember as a kid playing this at my cousins' house.  Sometimes Uncle Paul would join in; he had a unique way of playing.  If he had the top three cards in trump, he would lead off with the queen rather than the ace.  He felt confident, and I imagine he wanted to add to the suspense, but it sure was scary for his partner who wouldn't know for sure if Uncle Paul had the ace and so wouldn't know for sure whether to lay a point card or not.  So now, no matter what card game we're playing these days, if someone has all the top cards but starts playing with the lowest of the top, we call it "doing an Uncle Paul."

David and I played this with my parents Wednesday night.  It's a 4-player game with permanent partners.  It involves bidding and calling trump.  Certain cards in the trump suit are worth points.  If you bid and don't make it, you go back what you bid.  If you do make it, you make whatever points you take (not limited by your bid).  The bid starts at 6 and can go as high as 16 (which is actually 16/32 - that is, if you bid 16, which is all possibly points, you earn 32 if you make it and lose 32 if you don't).  Bidding only goes around the table once. 

The reason my picture for this game is two fives of the same color is that whatever suit is called trump, the five of the other color becomes trump as well (kind of like Euchre with the Jacks/bowers).  The card values are as follows:

Ace = 1 point
Jack = 3 points
Ten = 1 point
Each Five of the trump color (i.e. each "Pedro") = 5 points
Two = 1 point

If you play the two of trump you get to keep it, whether you take the trick or not (so you'd better not bid 16/32 if you don't have the two of trump!).  One thing I especially like about the game is that after the initial deal and bidding, everyone throws in their non-trump cards and receive the number of cards from the deck needed to bring their hand up to 6 cards, so even if your opening hand was bad you still have hope of getting something good in the second deal.  And if you're the dealer, you get to choose from all the remaining cards in the deck (although depending on how many cards the other players need dealt to them you might not have enough to bring your hand up to six!).

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