Released within a couple years of one another, the card games Pit and Gavitt’s Stock Exchange share basically the same gameplay. As Pit is more popular and still available today, this post will be based around Pit. I will detail the differences with Gavitt’s Stock Exchange at the end of the post.
Looking for specific Pit rules? | Setup | Playing the Game | Winning the Game | Advanced Game | Gavitt’s Stock Exchange |
Setup
- Sort the cards by their types. There should be nine cards of each type.
- For each player choose one type of card to use in the game. The rest of the cards are returned to the box.
- Decide whether you are going to play the basic or advanced game. If you are playing the advanced game, add the Bear and Bull card to the deck. If you are playing the basic game, the Bear and Bull card are returned to the box. These rules will start by explaining the rules for the basic game. The additional rules for the advanced game are listed after the basic rules.
- Choose a player to be the dealer. They will shuffle the cards, and deal them out facedown to the players. In the basic game each player receives nine cards. In the advanced game two of the players will receive ten cards.
- If your copy of the game has a bell, place it in the middle of the table.
Playing the Game
Before each hand/round begins each player has 30 seconds to sort the cards in their hand. You should place similar cards next to one another. During this time you should also decide which commodity you will try to collect during the round.
After everyone has had time to sort their cards, the game begins. All of the players play at the same time as there are no turns.
The objective of Pit is to collect all nine cards of the same type. You will try to collect all of the cards of the same type by trading with the other players.
To initiate a trade with another player you will look through your hand for cards that you don’t want. You can choose to trade multiple cards at the same time, but they all have to be the same commodity. You can trade between one and four cards at a time. When you have chosen what cards you want to trade, you will hold them out in front of you. You will hold them so the other players can’t see them. You will then say out loud how many cards you want to trade. Don’t tell the other players what commodity you are trading, or what commodity you want.
There is a variant rule for Pit where instead of calling out how many cards you want to trade, you can show a number of fingers indicating how many cards you want to trade.
If another player has the same number of cards that they want to trade, they can choose to trade with the other player that called out the same number of cards. If both players agree to trade, they will exchange the chosen cards. Both players put their new cards in their hand.
Sometimes there will be a situation where one player wants to trade several cards (three or four) and the other players only want to trade less cards. In this situation the player that wants to trade more cards can lower the number of cards they will trade in order to make a trade with another player. For example one player wants to trade four cards and another player only wants to trade two. The player that wanted to trade four cards can lower their trade to two cards and then exchange their cards with the player that only wanted to trade two cards.
End of Round
A round ends as soon as a player acquires all nine cards of one type. That player should ring the bell if your copy of the game included one. They should then say “Corner on” and then fill in the type of commodity they collected.
As long as they did indeed collect all nine cards of the commodity, they will score points equal to the number printed on the card they collected. They will write their score down.
The winner of the round then collects all of the cards and reshuffles them. They will deal out the cards to the players to start the next round.
Winning the Game
The first player to score 500 points, wins the game.
Advanced Game
If you want to play the advanced game, you will include the Bull and Bear cards in the deck. Setup is otherwise the same as the basic game except two players will receive an extra card.
Since two players will have ten cards in their hand, they may end up collecting all nine cards of one type and then having one extra card. In this case they can still end the round. They will just set the extra card aside and score points in the same way as if they only had nine cards.
The Bull card acts as a wild of sorts. You can count it as any other type of card when trying to corner the market. Instead of having to collect all nine cards of a type, you can instead collect only eight along with the Bull card. In this case you will score points equal to the number printed on the commodity you cornered.
Should you collect all nine cards of the same type and also have the Bull card, you have created a “Double Bull Corner”. In this case you will double the score you would normally score from the cards in your hand.
While the Bull card is useful, you want to try and get rid of the Bear card as quickly as possible since it can only potentially score you negative points. When you are trying to make a trade with another player, you can add the Bear card to a set of cards of another commodity. For example they have two corn cards and the Bear card. They can try to trade the two cards along with the Bear card for three cards from another player. You don’t have to tell another player that you are including the Bear card in a trade.
You can trade a Bull card in the same way. Since it is wild the only reason you would want to is if you think the round is about to end, and you don’t want to get stuck with negative points.
If you are stuck with a Bull or Bear card at the end of a round and you aren’t the winner of the round, you will receive a 20 point penalty. If you hold the Bull and Bear card, you receive a 40 point penalty.
Differences in Gavitt’s Stock Exchange
While not exactly the same as Pit, Gavitt’s Stock Exchange only differs in a couple different ways.
- Each suit has eight cards instead of nine so a player only has to collect eight cards to end the round.
- Players can only trade one or two cards at a time instead of four like in Pit.
- Instead of ringing the bell, players have to call out “Topeka” in order to end the round.
- The game ends when a player has earned $1,000.
- The scoring is slightly altered. The player who ended the round will score twice the value of the suit they collected. In addition all players who collected the majority of the shares of a company (five cards) will score the value of the suit they collected.
Gavitt’s Stock Exchange also includes a telegram card variation. If the variant is used the dealer will start the round with the telegram card. If the player that holds the telegram card makes a trade, they must pass the telegram card to the player that they traded with (it does not count as one of the cards that were traded). At the end of the round the scoring of the telegram card depends on if the player holding the card ended the round. If the player ended the round, the telegram card reduces the money the player won by $100. If the player holding the card did not end the round though, the player will receive an additional $100.
Components
- 90 Commodity Cards (nine of each type)
- Bear Card
- Bull Card
- Instructions
Year: 1903 | Publisher: Fundex, Hasbro, Parker Brothers, Winning Moves | Designer: Edgar Cayce, Harry Gavitt, George S. Parker
Genres: Card, Family, Set Collection, Speed
Ages: 7+ | Number of Players: 3-8 | Length of Game: 30-60 minutes
Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: Moderate-High
For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.