Queens And Jacks

Holding your trump can prove to be a great pinochle strategy or a losing one.  While playing pinochle you must be able to count on your partner, figure out where the cards are, and develop a strategy to take as many tricks as possible, especially the last one which is worth two extra points.


If your pinochle partner has taken the bid, it is your duty to help him discover where the power trump are. I will always play my aces of trump right away if my pinochle partner has taken the bid. This lets my pinochle partner know where at least some of the power is, runs the opponents out of trump and makes them more likely to play their power trump for fear of losing it. It also lets the whole table know who holds what, which is a great advantage if you want to control the play. The bid winner obviously wants control of the pinochle table.

If my opponents take the bid, I like to hold my power trump if I have a strong hand and try to draw out the bid winner’s high trump. This is most likely to be effective if the bid winner is to my left where I can play a 10 of trump and draw his ace right away.

Holding your trump / power cards is a technique that requires good pinochle judgement. If you try to hold your power when you are playing back up to your partner, that is like backing him up in a street fight and not throwing your punches untl after your partner has had much difficulty gaining control, if any at all in the pinochle battle at hand.

Well, playing on Yahoo! Games in an experience all in itself.  One of the easiest ways to give yourself that advantage is to have all information readily available.  Below is a screen shot of how I like to set up my monitor during online pinochle gameplay at Yahoo! Games.  The screen is set to 800 x 600 resolution and the game table is the same size yahoo creates it at. 
I grab the bottom of the blue bar at the top of the window of the pinochle table and try to move it as high as possible on my screen, then I come down to the bottom of the pinochle table and make it a little longer, extending it down to the task bar.  I then move the pinochle table window over to the left a bit to give me more room on the right.

I then open up the last trick box, and the score box, and move them to the right.  By doing this I am able to see exactly what is going on during the online pinochle game play.  Playing pinochle online can be fast paced and the cards do not wait around long for you to look at them, this window can help you see what was on the online pinochle table before Yahoo! cleaned it up so fast.

This applies mainly to playing pinochle on Yahoo! Games.  The BRB thing, actually it is okay during a game of pinochle in my opinion.  I do not mind waiting a little bit for the pinochle game to continue.  I actually do that quite often myself.  Here is the point of this post.  Please be courteous with your BRB’s. actually I have found that if I announce a BRB like this “I will be a moment or two after this hand” and give the other players forewarning so they can use that time to do things as well. 

Doing this speeds game time, lowers frustration levels, and provides for a more enjoyable experience overall.

Now to the Peck Peck Peck (typing)…  I like to write, obviously.  I do not mind chatting during the pinochle game.  What I do mind is when a person makes  the whole table wait for them to play minesweeper on their keyboard so they can type something that really wasn’t important enough for everyone to wait 30 seconds for them to finish typing.  That isn’t very nice. 

What I like to do is type between clicks.  I usually play on a laptop so it is a bit easier, but why not click a card and stop typing, who cares if you only get one word in a trick.  I have typed for 7 or 8 tricks to get my point out but I didn’t slow down the game. 

So for everyone’s sake, please limit the time it takes to write and type between clicking the cards.