Pit - Tips & Strategies

Don’t create situations where people won’t want to trade with you.

When you receive cards you want, pretend they are junk and try to trade the same number of cards to someone else so the original trader will be open to giving you more of the same later. When you trade with another player, make sure they’re not pulling the same trick on you!

Likewise watch how others trade, if they never add cards to their hands, but re-trade them immediately, they may be passing the Bear or Bull — or they’re nearly ready to win the hand! Look for players who consistently trade different numbers of cards because they’re more likely to have something you could use.

If you get stuck needing only one card, use some misdirection and try to trade two or three, then change your mind, choose a different card and trade one instead.

Learn to read the other players and act accordingly — it works!

Event though Pit isn’t a bank breaker, it will fall apart quickly as you are handing cards back and forth. I suggest getting some card sleeves (I prefer Fantasy Flight Game Sleeves), and protect your investment. You’d think a gamer like me would know to sleeve my games, but I thought… “Meh… it’s only PIT”. Two broken down games later (it got popular in my group), and I learned my lesson. Any game that requires passing from player to player quickly should be sleeved…. or buy a case of Pit wholesale, because it will crumble.

This is only a tip.

Normally you play with a number of commodities equal to the number of players, plus optionally the bear and the bull. To shake things up a bit, and to make the game a bit more challenging, add one more commodity than the rules tell you to. One of the hardest things this adds is making sure you have a full hand of commodities because you have so many extra cards that aren’t that commodity. This can also create more outs for what commodity you can collect or even holding out on two commodities longer with the larger hand size before you pick which one to focus on collecting.

If you play frequently, especially if you don’t use card sleeves, you’ll notice your cards will wear pretty badly. While I strongly recommend, card sleeves like Eric did, another thing I would recommend is to sometimes use the lowest point commodities instead of the highest point commodities, at least for more casual game where you’re not scoring points. This will spread the wear more evenly amongst the cards. Until I did this, I had half of my cards really worn and beaten up, and the other half of my cards were in pristine condition.

Try instead of the bell, putting a spoon in the middle. This way when someone finishes, they grab the spoon. If they’re discrete, some people might continue trading! Who know who will end up with the Bear then!?

Don’t play while the baby is sleeping, it will ruin your night.