Pit

Gameplay

If you like fast-paced games where everyone is shouting at once, you’re going to love Pit. Based on the Chicago Board of Trader (lovingly known as the Pit) and the Us Corn Exchange, it’s a game that’s supposed to simulate open bidding for commodities.

You need at last three players and at most eight. The game comes with 63 cards, with nine cards each of seven different commodities (later versions added an eighth commodity plus a Bull card and a Bear card, making the total number of 74 cards, but more on that later). In the original version, the commodities were Wheat, Barley, Corn, Rye, Oats, Hay, and Flax. In the newer versions, the list includes Wheat, Barley, Coffee, Corn, Sugar, Oats, Soybeans, and Oranges.

Each commodity has a certain value. The object of the game to collect all nine commodity cards. Once you do, call out “Corner on the___!” (fill in the blank on the commodity you’ve cornered) and reveal your cards. You earn however many points your commodity is worth, and that round is over. The game ends once a player reached an agreed-upon point total.

The fun thing about Pit is that there’s no turns—everyone plays at once. Players blindly exchange anywhere from one to four cards with other players by calling out how the number of cards you wish to trade until another player agrees. The cards are exchanged face down.

Back to the Bear and the Bull. This addition comes with the newer versions of the game, and means that two players will be dealt 10 cards while the others are dealt nine. You do not want the Bear card—if you have it, you can’t declare a Corner even if you have all commodity cards. The Bull card, though, is a wild card, and can be used to complete any set. You can use it in three ways:

• Holding all nine cards of the same commodity with or without a 10^th card in hand
• Holding eight cards of the same commodity and the Bull
• Holding all nine cards of the same commodity and the Bull, which means you get double the points!

Unfortunately, at the end of the round, if you are not the winner and you are holding the Bull or the Bear, you get a 20-point penalty. Note: the Bull and the Bear can be traded individually or with any number of cards of one commodity.

History

The first edition of Pit came out in 1903 and it is generally agreed that Edgar Cayce is the designer. However, it is likely that he stole the idea from the game Gavitt’s Stock Exchange, invented by Harry Gavitt, who says he thought up his game in 1896. He didn’t copyright and publish it until 1903, though.

Pit first went on sale in 1904 and was published by Parker Brothers, which is now owned by Hasbro.

Variations

There are a few games out there that are extremely similar to Pit:

• Billionaire
• Business:
• Cambio
• Quick 7
• Zaster

Reception & Awards

In the December 1972 publication of Games and Puzzles, Pit was featured, described as “an invaluable asset to any household: a marvelous ice-breaker and an infallible device for sending the older members of the family to. Bed when the party’s over (for them).”

Pit was also featured in the November 1980 publication of GAMES Magazine, with the cheeky description: “Rumor has it that Nelson Bunker Hunt never won a game of Pit in his life.”

[Nelson Bunker Hunt was an American oil executive whose billionaire fortune collapsed after he and his brothers tried to corner the world market in silver. The government stopped him.]

In 2010, Pit was named Family Games: The 100 Best, in which top designers and publishers wrote about the most enjoyable and cleverly designed games of the last 100 years. The reviewer of Pit? John Wick