Pinochle Card Game

Pinochle is a trick-taking game, similar to Euchre, Bridge, Hearts, Spades. It is played with a 48-card deck. Players score points by trick-taking and also by forming combinations of cards into melds. Each hand is played in three phases: bidding, melds, and tricks. A pinochle deck consists of two copies of each of the 9, 10, jack, queen, king, and ace cards of all four suits, for 48 cards per deck. Aces are always considered high. Pinochle follows a nonstandard card ordering. The complete ordering from highest to lowest is A, 10, K, Q, J, 9.