Queens And Jacks

Pinochle is a strategy game played with cards.  Popular game play has 4 players, 80 cards, and each player is dealt 20 cards.  You need 4 decks of poker cards to create a pinochle deck and only the 10, J, Q, K, and A is used.  The game is played with two teams of two players each who sit across from each other. The first team to reach 500 wins, bid winner’s scoring first in the close games (if bid winner’s final score 500 and bid loser’s final score 575, bid winners win game!) 

The game first starts off with a bidding session, this is where players have added up their meld (points) and bid for control of the hand.  The bid winner gets to call the trump suit which is a great advantage since a run in the trump suit gives more points and the trump suit is more powerful than any other suit that hand.  After bidding players then lay down the cards they have that have a meld value (cards that do not have value do not have to be layed down) and count their meld.  Next come playing “tricks”

Playing tricks is where you basically play to take tricks and score points.  Actually it isnt that basic at all, there is a lot of strategy involved.  The difference here from other games where you play to take tricks is that in pinochle you must play a card that beats an already played card and the 10 is the second highest card.  so the order of power from highest to lowest is: A, 10, K, Q, J.  A, 10, and K are worth 1 point each during the tallying of the score at the end of playing the tricks and Q’s and J’s are worthless.  The bid winner plays the first card and play continues clockwise.  The player that took the trick (had the highest card) then leads of the next trick.  A player can lead off with any card he or she chooses and each subsequent player must beat that player if they can.  A player MUST play a card in the suit that lead off the trick, if they do not have a card in that suit they MUST play a trump (even if they cannot beat an already played trump).  Remember your K’s, 10’s, and A’s are worth 1 point each so you want to give those cards to your partner if you can.