(In Cinch, the 5 of trump and the 5 of the same color as trump are the Right and Left Pedro)
Card Game Rules
Cinch, or Pedro, is a trick taking game played with 2 teams of 2 and a standard 52 playing card deck. The objective of Cinch is to be the first team to get 51 points.
For more trick taking games, check out our guides for Bridge and Spades.
If you are looking for cards to play Cinch with, check out a standard deck here or check out one of our newest arrivals here.
Ranking of Cards
Cards are ranked Aces high and 2s low.
The 5 of the trump suit is called the Right Pedro.
The 5 of the same color as the trump suit is called the Left Pedro and it is ranked above the 4 of trump.
Set Up
Before gameplay can begin, a dealer must be selected. To do so, players must choose a random card from a shuffled deck. The player with the lowest card becomes the dealer. Ties are broken with repeated drawings. The dealer shuffles the deck and then passes out, faced down, nine cards in sets of three to all players.
Bidding
Starting with the player left of the dealer and going clockwise, players make bids on how many tricks their team will take.
Discard
After one round of bidding, the highest bidder names the trump suit. The other players then discard all of their non-trump suited cards. The dealer next passes out cards so that every player has six cards. The dealer then looks through the deck to make their own hand have six cards, selecting the best possible cards.
How to Play
The highest bidder leads the trick and, proceeding clockwise, players must follow suit or play a trump. Highest card wins. The winner of the trick leads the next round.
Scoring
Teams receive points for certain trump cards won in tricks.
The Ace, Jack, 10, and 2, of trump is worth 1 point each.
The Right and Left Pedro are worth 5 points each.
If a team makes the number of points the bided, they receive those points and the losing team receives the difference between the winner’s and their points. For example, if a team makes their bid of 10 points and the other team wins 7 points, the score would be 10 to 3.
If however, the bidding team fails to make their bid, they receive 0 points while the other team receives 14 points more than the amount the bidding team fell short of the bid. So, if the bidding team bids 9 points and only makes 6 points, the other team would receive 17 points.
The first team to 51 wins.
For more information on Cinch, check out Wikipedia’s article here or Pagat’s article here.
Looking for more card games to play? Check out this article:
40+ Great Card Games For All Occasions
About the author: John Taylor is a content writer and freelancer through the company Upwork.com. You may view his freelancing profile here. He has a B. A. in English, with a specialty in technical writing, from Texas A&M University and a M. A. in English from the University of Glasgow. You may view his previous articles about card games here and his LinkedIn profile here.
