Bidder Out rule

[marya]

Hi everyone,

I have a question regarding a rule in Double Deck Pinochle. It is regarding who wins when the scores reach 500 or more. There is no question who wins if one side reaches 500 or more. But what happens if both sides do this at the end of a hand (e.g. 500 to 500 or 500 to 520 etc)?

My go-to site for game rules is pagat. They say: "The game is won by the first partnership to achieve a score of 500 or more. If both sides reach 500 on the same hand, the bidding side wins."

I originally interpreted this as a tiebreaker rule: if both teams score 500 or more, equally, then the winner is declared to be the bidding team. But if the score is uneven (e.g. 501 to 510), then I thought the high score wins no matter who made the bid. Perhaps I was confused because it is the normal way things are done in other card games.

Later, a player told me that there's a variation called "Bidder Out" in which the bidder always wins if both sides score 500 or more on the last hand. That is, the winner is not necessarily the high scorer! In this case, it is the bidding team.

I see a reference to the term "Bidder Out" here: http://users.igl.net/essiecade/TourneyGames.html - but they don't define what it means. It just says "Bidder out applies only when both teams go over 500 points on same hand.".

I'd love to hear from more than one player who can tell me what is expected. Should the win always be awarded to the bidding team if both score 500 or above? Does anyone use the rule that high score always wins, even if both scores are above 500?

Thanks!

Marya

[TigreLXIX]

Growing up playing single-deck pinochle, the "house rules" were as follows:
If the bidding team bid to "go out," meaning the bid plus their current score at the start of the hand totaled at least 120 - the score it takes to win in single-deck pinochle - and made the bid, they won regardless of the other team's score.

If the bidding team did not bid to go out, whichever team had the higher score won.

Example - the score is 90-90. One team bids 30 (therefore bidding to go out). The other team happens to have 28 meld and makes 10 points playing, so their total score after the hand is 128. The bidding team makes 32 combined meld plus trick points for a total score of 122. But because they bid to go out, they win. On the other hand, if they only bid 26 and wound up making the same 32, they would lose because they did not bid to go out and their opponents' final score was higher.

I am honestly not sure how the other other sites handle this, but I think the most common rule is that the bidder wins if they break 500 no matter what they bid (in contrast to the above rules).

I hope this helps, and I'd love to hear from others on this topic.

[marya]

I've been wondering why it's called "Bidder Out" and I think your explanation makes sense, thanks! I hope others will chime in.

[TigreLXIX]

Incidentally, if the rule is that you must bid to go out, this would necessitate a change for situations where the bid is left to the dealer.

Example - if the dealer's team is losing 485-400 and everyone passes, the dealer gets the bid for 50. If the dealer's team winds up making 110 that hand but the opponents make 40, the winning team will depend on which rules above apply. If the rules are that you need to "bid out," there would need to be an option for the dealer to bid out (in this example, he'd have to bid 100) when the bid is left to him. (If he bids out but doesn't make 100, they would lose 100 points - not the 50 they normally would have lost.)

[marya]

I should mention that I've posted this question in two other places:

at Board Game Geek
at Board & Card Games StackExchange

Currently only one person has posted an answer in each place, same as here (thank you Tigre!). The responses have all been the same: the bidding team is the one who wins when both sides finish at 500 or above.

So, I will be using this rule from now on. At World of Card Games, I implemented the game so that by default the high score wins, with a Bidder Out option. I'll be changing this in the next week or so, so the Bidder Out rule applies for all games.

[rakbeater]

I'm late to the thread here, but it is true that the winning team is always the bidding team when both hit 500+

[rdwrites]

it'll all go when he shifts it
They know they need to save and you get them to bid too high and set them, and guess what, you're back in the game.

Some of those strategies I wouldn't wait till opponents are near 500, they're good all the time.