In this website you will find a description of, the rules, score sheets and play pattern sheets for the card game "Cinch". What you will not find here is the ability to play the game online (but suggest you do check out the Links page).

An online search reveals there are variations in the rules and the game is sometimes known by an alternate names, "Pitch" or "Shmear", "Smier", "Smear" and "Pedro".

Cinch is a lot of fun. Often regular players who play many other games (Bridge, Cribbage, Euchre, etc.) comment that of all the card games they play Cinch is the most social and fun.

Typically the game is played by 4 people, 2 teams of 2 partners. In a pinch when adequate players are unavailable you can play it with two people but its not as much fun as with four. You can also play it with three people - very cutthroat. The best is a table of four players. It is much more fun when several people, multiples of 4, get together for Cinch tournaments of several tables.

The game is popular and regularly several people meet in homes at least weekly for round-robin type tournaments, often filling 4 to 6 tables (a houseful). The game is also played in community halls... and who knows where else.

While score can be recorded with pen and paper ideally the game is played with a scoreboard. Some use a Cribbage board. Since I have been unable to locate any proper Cinch scoreboards available commercially I can understand why everyone I've played with has only home-made boards. Some are quite rudimentary, merely holes drilled in a piece of plywood or conventional lumber and some kind of pegs (cribbage pegs, pop-rivets, nails, etc). So I've crafted some fine scoreboards from hardwood. I made pegs from steel roofing nails. Then I discovered some nice Cribbage metal pegs as well as some cheaper plastic pegs.

I offer some boards for sale for the low price of $20. This is a good bargain, especially when considering the price of hardwood, the labour required to make the boards and the pegs.

I couldn't find the official rules for the game online either, at least not for the version I have learned to play, so have written them and provided them here: rules. You will also find here the scoreboard design I developed to craft the wooden boards. So if you are handy in the workshop you can make a board too, as basic or fancy as you like. You'll find a pdf file here too, so you can print the information with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Once you get hooked on the game and get your friends hooked too you likely will want to setup some round-robin style Cinch tournaments and then you'll need the score sheets and play pattern sheets. Print as many as you need, with my compliments. So go check it out and have some fun playing Cinch with your buddies.

While the game can be learned quickly, the skill and strategy in the game come with experience... so get started now.

Here you will also find the rules and score sheet for a different card game Oh Shit! (aka Oh Hell!). The score sheet is handy to have so print as many as you need, again, with my compliments.

You can also find some pattern and score sheets for Bridge.

Last Edit Date: Saturday February 27, 2010