Play Some BishStrategy · Chapter 6
The kitty
You call on six cards. The kitty adds three more after you name trump. Here is what to expect from it.
The kitty adds about 5 to your count, and half the time it brings you a trump.
Every trump the kitty brings cuts your bait rate hard. With three trump and none in the kitty, 27% go bait. With one, 11%.
That is why a count of 25–26 is worth calling. You are not calling on six cards, you are calling on nine.
How often the kitty helps
This is every normal call in 400,000 dealt hands, 289,972 calls in all. For each trump count in your six cards, here is how often the kitty brought at least one more trump, and how much it added to the count.
| Trump in your six | Kitty brings a trump | Count added | Goes bait |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 55% | +5 | 24% |
| 3 | 49% | +5 | 18% |
| 4 | 43% | +4.7 | 10% |
| 5 | 35% | +4.3 | 4% |
Count added is the average count after the kitty minus the count before. Goes bait is for the whole group, whatever the kitty brought.
Across all normal calls the kitty brought no trump 51% of the time, one trump 40%, two trump 9% and all three under 1%.
Three trump, and what the kitty brings
Three trump is the most common call, and the kitty is what decides it.
| The kitty brings | How often | Goes bait | Real games |
|---|---|---|---|
| No trump | 51% | 27% | 26% |
| One trump | 41% | 11% | 11% |
| Two trump | 8% | 3% | 3% |
| Three trump | under 1% | 1% | 0% |
You lose more than a quarter of the time when the kitty misses, and almost never when it brings two. You cannot know in advance. You call on the odds, and the odds are good: about half the time the kitty rescues a three-trump hand.
The real games column comes from 10,585 hands played on the site. The sample is smaller, but the pattern is the same.
Four trump
| The kitty brings | Goes bait |
|---|---|
| No trump | 14% |
| One trump | 4% |
| Two trump | 0.4% |
Calling without the Jack
If you do not hold the Jack in your six cards, there is a 10% chance it is in the kitty. The same goes for the 9.
| You hold no Jack in your six | Goes bait |
|---|---|
| The kitty brings the Jack | 2% |
| It does not | 21% |
The same for the 9 of trump: with no 9 in your six, 5% go bait if the kitty brings it and 22% if it does not.
An Ace in the kitty helps too, about 3 points of count each. Calls with no Ace in the kitty go bait 20% of the time. With one, 14%. With two, 8%.
Reading your six
A count of 25 with three trump
Three hearts with the Jack gives a count of 25. Overall a three-trump call goes bait 18%. If the kitty has no heart it goes bait about 27%. If it has one, about 11%. Half the time it will have one.
How we know
We dealt 400,000 hands and let the computer players bid. We kept the 289,972 normal calls, recorded the caller's six cards and the three in the kitty, then played each call out and counted how many went bait. A half-bait counts as a bait. The real games column uses 10,585 hands from the site.
The other players always play the same careful way, and real people are messier.
Updated 2026-11-05.