How to Play Pinochle: Complete Rules

Pinochle is a game for four players in two partnerships. Partners sit across from each other. You score points two ways: by showing combinations of cards called meld, and by capturing Aces, 10s and Kings in tricks. This page describes the game exactly as PinochleRun plays it, and notes where other tables do things differently.

First game in five steps

1. Deal all 48 cards, 12 to each player.
2. Bid for the right to name trump. Bids start at 25. The high bidder names the trump suit.
3. Pass 4 cards: the bidder’s partner sends 4 to the bidder, and the bidder sends 4 back.
4. Meld: everyone lays down their meld, and each team adds it up.
5. Play 12 tricks. Follow suit, beat the highest card if you can, and trump when you’re out of a suit. Aces, 10s and Kings count 1 point each. The bidding team must reach its bid. First team to 150 wins.

The deck

A pinochle deck has 48 cards: two each of the Ace, 10, King, Queen, Jack and 9 in all four suits. Every card in the deck has an identical twin.

The cards rank in this order, highest first:

Ace, 10, King, Queen, Jack, 9

The 10 ranks above the King. That’s the single most surprising thing for new players, and Pagat’s partnership rules call it “likely to be a stumbling block.” One trick for remembering it is to say “Ace, Ten, King” to yourself until it sticks.

Making a pinochle deck from two regular decks

You don’t need to buy a special deck. Take two ordinary 52-card decks and pull out the 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace of every suit from both. That gives you 24 cards from each deck, 48 in all. Shuffle them together and put the 2s through 8s away. The 1914 Foster’s Hoyle describes the deck exactly this way: two packs of 24 cards, “all below the Nine being deleted.”

The deal

Choose the first dealer any way you like. After each hand, the deal passes to the left.

The dealer shuffles, offers a cut, and deals all 48 cards clockwise starting with the player on the dealer’s left, until everyone has 12 cards. No cards are left over. Pagat’s partnership rules deal three at a time; the 1914 and 1926 Hoyles deal four at a time. What matters is that everyone ends up with 12.

Bidding

The winning bidder gets to name trump, receives cards from their partner, and leads the first trick. In exchange, their team promises to score at least the number they bid.

Here’s how the auction works in our game:

• The player to the dealer’s left bids first, and bidding goes clockwise.
• The minimum bid is 25. Each bid must be higher than the last, and bids go up by 1, as far as 100. You can jump, for example from 26 to 30.
• You can pass instead. A pass is final: you’re out of the bidding for the rest of the hand.
• Bidding continues around the table until three players have passed. The last player left wins the bid.
• A bid of 100 ends the bidding at once, since nobody can top it.
• If the other three players pass without bidding, the dealer must bid 25.

A bid is a number only. You don’t name a suit while bidding.

Pagat’s partnership rules start at 250 and go up in tens, which is the same thing on the larger scoring scale described under Counting points below. They also let the dealer take the bid at the minimum when everyone else passes, as our game does.

Deciding how much to bid (counting your meld, guessing what your partner holds) is a topic of its own, and a bidding guide is on the way.

Naming trump

The winning bidder names any suit as trump for the hand. Every trump beats every card of the other three suits, so even the 9 of trump beats an off-suit Ace.

Trump matters twice. It decides who controls the tricks, and it decides which melds count: a run only counts in trump, and a King-Queen marriage is worth double in trump.

Passing cards

Once trump is named, partners trade cards across the table:

1. The bidder’s partner passes 4 cards face down to the bidder.
2. The bidder adds them to their hand, then passes 4 cards back. These can include cards they just received.

Nobody else passes. The defenders keep the hands they were dealt.

Pagat’s partnership rules pass four cards each way, the same as here, but the four-hand games in the 1914 and 1926 Hoyles have no passing at all. Ask at a new table.

Meld

After passing, all four players lay down their meld face up so everyone can check it. Each team adds its two players’ meld together. You pick your cards back up before play begins.

There are three types of meld:

• Type I, runs and marriages: the run (A, 10, K, Q, J of trump), marriages (a King and Queen of the same suit) and the 9 of trump, called the dix (pronounced “deece”).
• Type II, pinochles: the Jack of Diamonds with the Queen of Spades.
• Type III, arounds: one card of the same rank in each of the four suits.

A card can be used in melds of different types, but only once within the same type. For example, the Queen of Spades can be part of a pinochle (Type II) and a spade marriage (Type I) at the same time. But the King and Queen inside a run can’t also score as a separate royal marriage, because both are Type I.

Here are the main values on our scale. “Two copies” means you hold both of each card the meld needs.

For every meld, with worked examples and the values other tables use, see the pinochle meld chart.

Meld isn’t banked yet when you lay it down. Whether a team keeps it depends on how the hand goes (see Making or going set, below).

Playing tricks

The bidder leads the first trick with any card. Play goes clockwise, and each player adds one card. The winner of each trick leads the next one. There are 12 tricks in a hand.

What you must play

• Follow suit if you can.
• When you follow suit, you must “crawl”: play a card that beats the highest card in the trick if you have one. If you can’t beat it, play any card of the suit.
• If you can’t follow suit, you must play a trump if you have one. If someone has already trumped the trick, you must beat that trump if you can. Even if you can’t, you still have to play a trump.
• Only if you have no cards of the suit led and no trumps may you play any card.

The rule to beat the high card applies even when the card winning the trick is your partner’s.

Who wins the trick

The highest trump wins. If no trump was played, the highest card of the suit led wins. Because every card has a twin, two identical cards often land on the same trick. When that happens, the one played first wins.

An example trick

Spades are trump. North leads the King of Clubs.

• East holds the Ace, 10 and 9 of Clubs. East can’t slip the 9 underneath, because a higher club is in hand. East must beat the King, so the legal plays are the Ace or the 10. East plays the 10 of Clubs.
• South has no clubs, so South must trump, and plays the 9 of Spades.
• West holds the Ace and Jack of Clubs. The trick has been trumped, and no club can beat a trump, so West only has to follow suit and may play either club. West keeps the Ace and plays the Jack of Clubs.

South’s 9 of Spades wins. The trick holds a King and a 10, so it’s worth 2 points to North and South.

Pagat’s partnership rules and the National Pinochle Association’s tournament rules also require you to beat the highest card, but Pagat notes that most card game books published since 1945 require it only when trump is led.

Counting points

After all 12 tricks, each team counts the cards it took. Only three ranks score, and they’re called counters:

• Each Ace, 10 and King: 1 point.
• Queens, Jacks and 9s: nothing.
• Last trick: 1 point.

There are 24 counters in the deck, so trick points always add up to 25 per hand.

Two scales: ÷10 and x10

Some tables play every number ten times larger. It’s the same game, and only the zeros change. Pagat’s partnership rules use the larger scale and note that many players divide all scores by 10. Our game uses the smaller one.

The scale even seems to be regional. Pagat’s double-deck page passes on a player’s report that “100 aces scoring is found East of the Hudson River, and 10 aces elsewhere.”

The classic card values

The classic count gives each card its own value. It’s the count in Foster’s Hoyle (1914), Hoyle’s Games (1926) and Bicycle’s two-handed rules:

The total is still 250 per hand, but on this system the Queen and Jack count too. These sources give meld on the x10 scale as well.

Making or going set

Once the tricks are counted, each team adds its meld and its trick points.

The bidding team

• Made it: if meld plus trick points equal or beat the bid, the team scores everything it earned (not just the bid).
• Went set: if the total falls short, the team scores nothing for the hand, and the amount of the bid is subtracted from its score. Its meld and tricks are thrown out.

Only the bidding team can lose points.

The defenders and saving meld

The defending team scores its meld plus its trick points, but only if it took at least 1 trick point: an Ace, a 10, a King or the last trick. This is called saving your meld. If the defenders take no trick points at all, they score nothing for the hand.

There is one exception. If a team’s only meld is the 9 of trump (one or both), that meld counts anyway. Pagat’s partnership rules say the nines “save themselves.”

When the bid is out of reach

Sometimes the bidding team’s meld is so low that even all 25 trick points couldn’t reach the bid. In that case the hand isn’t played. It ends right after meld. The bidding team loses the amount of its bid, and the defenders score their meld.

For example, if you bid 40 and your team melds 12, then 12 + 25 = 37, which is short of 40. You lose 40 and the hand ends.

The National Pinochle Association’s tournament rules handle a set differently: the opponents receive the bid plus their meld. Pagat’s partnership rules also let the bidder throw in a hopeless hand after meld, with the same result as a bid out of reach.

Winning the game

The first team to reach 150 points wins.

• If both teams reach 150 on the same hand, the bidding team wins, even if the other team has more points. For example, if the bidding team ends on 155 and the defenders on 170, the bidding team still wins.
• A team that falls to -300 points loses the game at once.

Pagat’s partnership rules play to 1,500 on the larger scale and also give the win to the bidding team when both sides pass the target together.

To keep track at the table, use a printable score sheet or the score keeper on your phone.

Reneging

A renege is breaking a rule of play, such as not following suit when you could. In our online game you can’t renege, because the game only lets you play legal cards.

At a table, none of our sources gives a renege penalty for the single-deck game. The National Pinochle Association’s tournament rules, written for its double-deck partnership game, say a renege occurs when a player:

• fails to follow suit;
• fails to beat the highest card played;
• fails to cut (trump) when void of a suit;
• fails to declare Aces before the first card is played.

Under those rules, only an opponent can call a renege. Once one is called, play stops. The penalty is that the opposing team gets the amount of the bid plus its meld. If a renege is called and isn’t proven, the team that called it has committed the renege. Agree on your penalty before you start, and see the NPA’s site for its tournament play.

A worked example hand

Here’s one full hand, scores only, on our scale. North and South are partners against East and West. Before the hand, North-South have 112 and East-West have 96.

The bidding. East deals, so South bids first. South bids 25, West 26, North passes, East passes, South 34, West passes. Three players have passed, so South wins the bid at 34 and names hearts as trump. North passes 4 cards to South, and South passes 4 back.

The meld.

North-South need 34 − 28 = 6 trick points. All 25 trick points would give them 53, so the bid is within reach and the hand is played.

The tricks. North-South take 14 counters plus the last trick, for 15. East-West take the other 10. That’s 25 in all.

The score.

North-South reach 150 and win the game.

What if it had gone differently?

• North-South take only 5 trick points. 28 + 5 = 33, one short of 34. They go set: 112 − 34 = 78. East-West take the other 20 and score 12 + 20 = 32, for 128.
• East-West take no trick points. North-South take all 25 and score 28 + 25 = 53, for 165. East-West didn’t save their meld, so they score nothing and stay on 96.
• South had bid 60. 28 + 25 = 53 can’t reach 60, so the hand isn’t played. North-South lose 60, falling to 52. East-West score their meld of 12, for 108.
• East-West had started on 140. Their 22 would take them to 162, past North-South’s 155. Both teams reached 150 on the same hand, so North-South, the bidders, still win.

Other ways to play

Two-handed pinochle. Bicycle’s rules deal 12 cards to each player, turn up the next card for trump, and leave the rest face down as a stock. While the stock lasts, you don’t have to follow suit, and you can meld only after winning a trick. Each player draws a card after every trick. Once the stock runs out, the last 12 tricks are played with strict rules: follow suit, and try to win when trump is led. Bicycle plays to 1,000 points.

Three-handed pinochle. In the auction game on Pagat, each player gets 15 cards, 3 go face down to a kitty, and the bidder’s opponents don’t meld. In the cutthroat version Pagat describes, all three players meld and the game is 1,500 points on the larger scale.

Double-deck pinochle. This uses 80 cards: four copies each of A, 10, K, Q and J, with no 9s. Each player gets 20 cards. In our game, the minimum bid is 50, you can only name a suit as trump if you hold a marriage in it, there’s no passing, the last trick is worth 2, and a game is 500. The full rules are on the double-deck pinochle rules page, and you can play double deck online.

To take these rules to the table, print the one-page rules sheet. Or play a hand now against the computer.

Sources

• Pagat: Single Deck Partnership Pinochle, plus Pagat’s double-deck, auction and three-player pages.
• National Pinochle Association, Tournament Rules (revised July 2014).
• Bicycle Cards: Pinochle (two-handed).
• R. F. Foster, Foster’s Complete Hoyle (1914), “Binocle.”
• Hoyle’s Games, revised by R. F. Foster (1926), “Pinochle.”
• World of Card Games’ rules, which our game follows.