Bidding and the Kitty in Thousand — How High You May Bid

The bidding starts with a forced 100, and bids go up by 10. Without a marriage in hand you may go up to 120 at most, and with a marriage — up to 120 plus its value: from 160 with a spades marriage to 220 with a hearts marriage. The winner takes the kitty (musik in Polish, also called the talon: the three cards set aside at the deal), passes a card to each opponent and declares what they are playing for — no less than they bid.

At a glance

The player to the dealer’s left has the forced 100; from there you raise by 10 or pass, and a pass is final.
The limit: 120 without a marriage, 120 + the value of the marriages in your hand if you have any.
The winner takes the kitty (3 cards) and passes one card to each opponent.
The contract: no less than the bid; in our game the limit is counted afresh from the cards you hold after the kitty.
The card missing for a marriage is in the kitty in 17.6% of cases.

How the bidding goes

The player to the dealer’s left is “on the kitty” (in Polish na musiku) — they have the forced 100, even if they say nothing more. From there the bidding goes in turn, clockwise: each player raises by 10 or passes. A player who has passed does not return to the bidding. When one player is left, they win at the last amount; when everyone passes, the player with the forced 100 plays for 100.

Example — Cara deals, so Ann opens the bidding:

Player	Move	Why it can be so
Ann	100	forced
Ben	110	anyone may go up to 120
Cara	120	has no marriage, cannot go higher
Ann	pass
Ben	130	has a clubs marriage, so may go up to 180
Cara	pass

Ben wins the bidding and plays for at least 130.

Ben’s hand: a clubs marriage (60), so he may bid up to 120 + 60 = 180.

How high you may bid

Without a marriage you can make at most 120 points — that is what all the cards are worth. So without a marriage in hand you may not bid higher. Every marriage you hold raises the limit by its value:

Marriages in hand	Highest bid
no marriage	120
spades ♠	160
clubs ♣	180
diamonds ♦	200
hearts ♥	220
hearts ♥ + diamonds ♦	300
hearts ♥ + diamonds ♦ + clubs ♣	360

That is how Polish Wikipedia, Kurnik and CycloWiki count the limit. Polish Wikipedia adds that with three players you cannot make more than 360 anyway. In our game the same limit applies in both rule sets, PL house and PL tournament.

The kitty

After the bidding the winner takes the 3 cards from the kitty and holds 10. Whether the others see the kitty depends on the rules:

Rules	Everyone sees the kitty
PL house (our game), Kurnik	always
tournament rules (our PL tournament)	when the bidding reached 130
rules with the barrel (CycloWiki)	always, except when playing for the forced 100
other variants (Polish Wikipedia)	always, only above 100, or never

The kitty is worth on average 15 card points (three of the 24 cards, which have 120 points between them) — counted before you see your own cards.

Can the kitty complete a marriage?

From your seat you cannot see 17 cards: 14 are held by the opponents and 3 lie in the kitty. Each of them is equally likely to be in the kitty. If you hold a king or a queen without its pair, the missing card is in the kitty in 17.6% of cases — that is 3 in 17. We calculated it exactly, going through all possible kitties:

How many cards are missing for marriages	With three players (kitty: 3 of 17 cards)	With two players (kitty: 2 of 14 cards)
1, e.g. you hold K♥ but not Q♥	17.6%	14.3%
2, from two different marriages	33.1%	27.5%
3	46.5%	39.6%
4	57.9%	50.5%

The figures give the chance that the kitty will provide at least one of the missing cards. In the bidding, though, only the marriages you already hold count: with a bare king of hearts you bid at most up to 120, even if the queen of hearts lies in the kitty. A higher limit can come only from the contract after taking the kitty.

Passing cards and the contract

The winner of the bidding passes one card to each opponent, so that everyone has 8 cards. The tournament rules require the cards to be passed face down; CycloWiki also describes passing them face up, at the declarer’s choice. Then the declarer declares what they are playing for: at least what they bid; the contract is raised in the same steps as the bid, that is in Poland by 10.

In our game the limit for the contract is counted from the cards the declarer holds after passing cards to the opponents:

a marriage completed with a card from the kitty raises the limit;
whoever passes away a card from a marriage loses that marriage in the limit too;
the contract never falls below the amount bid.

You won the bidding with the king of spades and no queen, so with a limit of 120. The kitty brought the queen of spades, and you passed 9♣ and J♣ to the opponents. Now you may declare up to 160.

The bomb

After taking the kitty, and before passing cards, the declarer may give up the game. In Poland this is the bomb: under house rules (PL house) the declarer gets 0 and each opponent +60 (unless they already have 800 or more); each player has 3 bombs per game, and may not throw them with 800 points or more. The tournament rules do not know the bomb. How many bombs and how many points in other homes, and also the rospisat’ of the rules with the barrel: the bomb and rospisat’.

With two players

With two players the forced 100 belongs to the player who is not dealing, and the limit is counted in the same way: for example, with diamonds and clubs marriages you bid up to 260. After the bidding the winner chooses one of the two kitties of 2 cards, puts 2 cards aside and declares. The chosen kitty is worth on average 10 card points, and the chances that it completes a marriage are in the table above. In our game the bomb can be thrown even before choosing the kitty. Full rules: Thousand for two.