How to Play Pitty Card — Game Rules & Instructions

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Pitty Pat is a card-game that originated from Belize. Two to four players can play it with a deck of 52 cards.

It’s a straightforward matching game where the colors are not necessary, and the game is based solely on the cards rank.

Almost every player, from young to old, will learn the rules of this game quickly, as you only need to match the top card in the deck with a card from your hand.

If you’re not able to match a card, you‘ve another chance to discard a card by overturning a new card from the stockpile.

Most hands-only take some minutes to play, so you can easily squeeze in a game of Pitty Pat any evening.

Although at first, it might not be clear, the game is affiliated with the Rummy family, with some resemblance to Conquien (Coon Can).

This becomes particularly obvious when you can imagine playing cards on the discard pile as a merger and discard.

A deck of 52 cards is utilized in playing the game without any real relative card order amongst the cards. Let’s show you how to play Pitty card game.

Pitty Patty Objective

Pitty Pat’s goal is to be the first to discard all cards at hand. You can do this by matching the discard pile’s top card with the cards in your hand+.

Here are the things you need:

Pack of cards
Paper
Pen or pencil

The Deal

The dealer is randomly chosen by the players, which can be done by any preferred method, like using birthdays or cutting the deck.
The dealer needs to rearrange the card and distribute 5 cards to every player.
The cards remaining are placed in the middle of the table and form the stock.

Gameplay

Determine the first dealer before the game starts.

The typical way is for one player to start dealing from the shuffled cards face up to the players at once. The first dealer is the 1^st player to get any Jack.

In case of disputes over seating positions, all players may draw a card each from the rearranged deck, with the players choosing a seat according to the rank of cards taken at the table, from highest to lowest.

After determining the first dealer, the cards must be shuffled entirely by the dealer and cut by the player to his right.

Following the cut, the dealer starts sharing the cards, facing down in a clockwise direction one after another, and beginning with the player directly to his left.

This continues till all the players (with himself) has a hand comprising of 5 cards.

Then he places the put the rest of the cards face down in a pile in the middle of the table. This is the stockpile.

Next, he takes the first card of the stockpile and sets it face-up alongside the stock to begin the game pile.

The game begins with the player immediately to the dealer’s left and turns clockwise around the table from one player to another.

When it’s the turn of a player, he observes his hand and has two likely moves, as follows:

If, at the beginning of his turn, the player has a card of equivalent rank to the current top card of the deck, he may play this card from his hand.

Afterward, the player picks another card from his hand and places it on the discard pile, thus completing his turn.

However, if the player doesn’t have a card in his hand matching the discard pile’s current top card, he has to take the top card of the draw pile and put it the discard pile.

But if the player has a card that matches this new card, he may place it to the discard pile and then play any other card he wants from his hand, ending his turn.

If he doesn’t have any card that matches the face-up new card, he also ends his turn.

During his turn, if a player plays his last card, he wins the hand and receives one point.

Even if during his turn, a player finds out that he has two cards his hand, which are of the same rank, he reveals them and wins the hand, also scoring one point.

The first player to receive a total of five points is declared the winner of the game.

Depleted Stock

When the stockpile is exhausted, and the current player isn’t able to use the discard pile’s top card, then the discard pile can be rearranged and turn-over to serves as the new stockpile.

The top card of this new stock is turned over to form the beginning of the new discard pile.

End of Hand

The 1st player to be out of cards by making 3 pairs wins the game.

Scoring

In Pitty Pat, there’s no rating of melds or points that are still held in the hands of other players.

Rather, players decide to use chips or other tokens to pay the winner, with the players who have no chips left being eliminated from the game, and with the last player holding any remaining chips being declared the winner.

Another way is to add up the number of games won in the session, with the overall winner being the player with the most winning hands at the end of a period or after a certain maximum number of hands.