Auction Pitch
Around the middle of the 19th century among American players an innovation spread, allowing the eldest hand to "sell the trump", i.e. auction the privilege to pitch. This early form of Auction Pitch is now known as Commercial Pitch.
In Commercial Pitch the players in turn get a chance to bid 1–4 points for the privilege of pitching, or pass. Each bid must be higher than the previous one. Eldest hand immediately scores the amount of the bid. A highest bidder who does not win at least as many points as bid is set back the amount of the bid. Eldest hand may refuse to sell the right to pitch to the highest bidder, in which case eldest hand must win at least as many points or is set back.
In modern Auction Pitch the right to pitch is bought from the bank rather than from eldest hand. Starting with eldest hand each player bids for the privilege of pitching or passes exactly once. The highest bidder determines trumps by leading to the first trick. After the last trick all parties score their points as in All Fours. However, if the pitcher's party has not won as many points as bid, then the pitchers party does not score at all and is instead set back by the amount of the bid.
Read more about this topic: All Fours
Famous quotes containing the words auction and/or pitch:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“He maintained that the case was lost or won by the time the final juror had been sworn in; his summation was set in his mind before the first witness was called. It was all in the orchestration, he claimed: in knowing how and where to pitch each and every particular argument; who to intimidate; who to trust, who to flatter and court; who to challenge; when to underplay and exactly when to let out all the stops.”
—Dorothy Uhnak (b. 1933)