Parker Brothers Game of Pit

Get a large group of people together, sit around the table, and try an old classic card game called Pit. You’ll laugh until you can’t breathe and that’s just in the first round! Initially, the game sounds as if it would be boring: trading commodities like corn, barley or wheat - but the game is much more appealing after you’ve tried a round.

Pit throws the players into action-packed screaming, grabbing and gesticulating wildly, just like on an actual trading floor. If you’re the first to corner the market, that is, get 9 cards of all the same commodity, you’ll win the game - maybe. There are a couple of other factors in play as well.

Although the game can be played with as little as three people the real action starts when you play with a few more. Eight is the maximum number of players and that’s the ideal number for the maximum amount of fun. With 8 players you get much more screaming, giggling, and snatching than with fewer players.

Here’s how the game works: After the cards are dealt the bell is rung and trading begins. You’ll look at your hand of cards and see what you have the most of, for example, corn. So, you decide immediately (this game is fast-paced), that you’ll collect corn. With that decided you set about screaming over everyone else, the amount of barley you have to trade, for instance. So, you’ll yell repeatedly: two barley, two barley, two barley, until someone trades you any two cards they have for the two barley.

With 8 people yelling “two corn”, “three beans”, “four barley”, all at the same time, while grabbing and throwing cards during the exchange, it’ll get loud, it’ll get confusing and it will definitely be a load of laughs.