On Wednesday, December 6, 2000 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-5, Jake Patterson wrote:

You may like to look at http://www.pagat.com/allfours/pedro.html which
has several related games but not this exact one. It is perhaps
interesting that the similar games 63 and 83 are played in Maine, which
is not all that far away.

Thanks for your reply. I had found links to the pagat site in my searches
on Google, but the site was down when I tried to go to it. I probably
should have checked Google's cached copies...

You do not say this, but I would guess that perhaps it is illegal to discard a scoring trump card. Otherwise an opponent of the bidder could easily save the joker by discarding it.

When I have played, cards were discarded face up, and the same for when you are "out" after holding no trumps in your hand. I would assume, but I have not asked, that it would be illegal to throw away scorring trumps in either situation.

Suppose that the first player throws off and the second player plays a (high) trump which the third player cannot beat. Is the third player now allowed to throw off or must he also play (waste) a trump?

I have only played it myself a few times, but I think they must waste a trump in this situation.

Presumably they get these points irrespective of whether the bidding
team wins or not?

I think so, but I was not the one keeping score... I will ask and post a clarification.

This is one of those situations that I wish I had gotten into this tradition at an earlier age, I think my mother tried to push this on me too soon (I was 4 or 5 at the time.) This turned me off on it for a while, I am just now getting into it (at 28)

I may have to write a computer version...

I do have few corrections to my previous post right now... The trump nines are actually worth nine points each instead of ten, and the trump Jack and trump Ten are each worth one point. I was working from memory there. This leaves the trump Queen, Eight, Seven, Six, Four and Three as non-scoring. I recall that it is also possible to bid a 100 double, for example if you hold the Ace, Queen, Jack, Ten, and both Kings of trump. I am pretty sure that a team that fails to make their bid actually goes back by the bid amount and not by the difference, and I think that a failed bid of 100 double results in that team losing 100 and not 200, but I will double check that (and the other details.)

One more thing... minimum bid was 1 point, so I would think it would be possible for partners to exchange information encoded in the bid amounts. I will inquire as to the legality of that technique. Of course that would be pretty hard to stop people from doing if they were so inclined.

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question on the cards that are to be discarded when you weed out all but six.. can the joker or the 9 or 5 of opposite suit be discarded or are they considered trump and have to be kept or disclosed that they are being discarded?

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