Pinochle

    These are the rules for Double Deck, No Nines, Partners Pinochle.  Start by taking two standard Pinochle Decks, and discarding the nines.  Use them for leveling furniture, or inane card tricks, or whatever you like. Alternatively, take four decks of cards and toss out everything below the Tens (not really recommended).  As with all card games, shuffle the cards well.  Deal will rotate to the left between hands.

Players and Cards

There are four players; partners sit across from each other.

The deck consists of 80 cards, containing {A,10,K,Q,J} in each of the four suits, and with four identical copies of each card.

Premise of the Game

After the deal there is a round of bidding, sometimes called an auction.  A bid indicates the number of points a player beleives their team capable of taking in the hand.  Whoever bids the highest has the privelages of choosing the trump suit and of leading the first trick.  The object of the high bidder's team is to win at least as many points as the bid.  The opposing team tries to take as many points as they can.  Points can be scored in two ways:

• By declaring and showing (melding) combinations of cards held in a players hand;
• By winning aces, tens, and kings in tricks.

The game is played to a score of 500 points.  If both teams have acheived 400 points or more, then winning the bid is also required; this means that a team can theoretically pass 500 points without winning.

Deal

Deal and play are clockwise.  All the cards are dealt out, so that each player has 20 cards.  Dealing practice varies; common methods are to deal out cards to players four or five at a time.

Rank and Value of Cards

In each suit the cards rank, from highest to lowest, Ace, Ten, King, Queen, Jack.  At the end of play. each side counts the points they have taken in tricks.  Each Ace, Ten, and King is worth one point, and the team that wins the last trick scores an extra two points.  Hence, there are a total of 50 points in tricks.

Meld

Points can be scored for certain combinations of cards in the hand of a player.  These combinations are called meld, and they are disclosed to the other players before the start of trick play.
There are three types of meld.  Any particular card can only be used once in each category of meld, but can be used in multiple categories.  The point scores for meld are given in the following table:

Category	Combination	Single	Double	Triple	Quadruple
Type I Runs and Marriages	Run - Ace, Ten, King, Queen, Jack; all in Trump	16	150	225	300
	Royal Marriage - King and Queen of Trump	4	8	12	16
	Marriage - King and Queen of the same suit, out of Trump	2	4	6	8
	Note: A run in a suit other than trump is not worth anything more than the marriage score for the King and Queen
Type II Pinochles	Pinochle - Queen of Spades and Jack of Diamonds	4	30	90	120
Type III Rounds	Aces Around - Ace of each Suit	10	100	150	200
	Kings Around - King of each Suit	8	80	120	160
	Queens Around - Queen of each Suit	6	60	90	120
	Jacks Around - Jack of each Suit	4	40	60	80
	Note: Tens Around has no value in meld.

In addition, sometimes combinations of the above meld will have their own name:

Roundhouse: A Marriage in all four suits.  It totals 24 points: Kings Around (8) + Queens Around (6) + Royal Marriage (4) + Three Common   
    Marriages (6)
Run and a Roundhouse: A run in trump plus a roundhouse.  Totals 36 points; It's a Roundhouse plus a Run, but subtract the Royal Marriage, which is
    included in the Run (24+16-4=36).
Twenty Pounder: A Run with a second king and queen forming an additional Royal Marriage.  20 points. Indicitive of a strong suit.

Example: with hearts as trump, the following hand:
   

Hearts:	A 10 K K K Q Q J
Diamonds:	Q Q J
Clubs:	Q Q
Spades:	A K K Q Q J J

Scores an impressive 88 points in meld: a Twenty Pounder (20), two Marriages in Spades (4), a Pinochle (4), and double Queens Around (60).  Notice there is only one Royal Marriage, as one pairing already counts in the Run, but that one Queen of Spades is simultaneously a part of a Marriage in Spades, a Pinochle, and the double Queens Around.  This is allowed because these melds are all of different categories.

Meld can only be scored if your team has a total of at least 20 points in meld.  Before laying down meld, players can optionally announce the value of it. This is usually done if a player suspects his team will not reach the 20 point total.  If there is less than 20 points total, then a team does not need to display the meld, as it has no value.  Furthermore, if the team that wins the bid fails to reach 20 meld, they are 'Board Set' and lose the bid without playing, although the winning bidder must still name a trump suit, and the opposing team can still score their meld.

Bidding

The person to the left of the dealer bids first.  The opening bid must be at least 50, but may be higher.  Bidding proceeds in increments as small as one until 60 is reached, at which point, bids must be in multiples of 5 (65,70,80,85,etc).  Bid proceeds clockwise.  Each bid must be higher than the previous bids, but a player who does not wish to bid may pass.  Once you have passed, you cannot bid again.  If the first three bidders pass, the dealer is forced to take the bid at the entry level of 50.  The bidding continues for as many rounds as necessary until only one bidder is left.  This person wins the bid and has the right to call trump and lead the first trick.

Calling Trump and Melding

The winning bidder now chooses the rump suit and announces it.  To call a suit, the caller must have a marriage or a run in that suit (Type I meld).  If the winning bidder doesn't have a marriage at all, then the hand is not played, and his or her team loses the bid by default.

Once trump is called all of the players declare their meld and lay it out face up on the table.  A meld combination must be entirely in one players hand to count; a queen of spades in your hand and a jack of diamonds in your partners cannot be coutned as a pinochle, for example.  Partners add together the scores for their meld, and this is written down on the score sheet.

Here again, if a team does not have 20 meld points, they score nothing for meld.  In this case, the team does not lay their cards on the table.  Also again, if the team of the widding bidder does not have 20 meld, they are 'Board Set'.

Play

The person who won the bid begins the play by leading to the first trick, and the others play in turn, clockwise.  A trick consists of one card from each player, and if it contains no trump it is won by the highest card played of the suit led.  If any trums are played to the trick, then the highest trump wins, irrespective of any other cards in the trick.  If there are two or more identical highest cards, then the first of these cards played wins the trick.  The winner of a trick leads the next one.

When leading to a trick, any card may be played.  When following a trick, players must follow suit if they can, and must crawl (this means that each player must play a card which is higher in rank than the highest card played to the trick so far).  A player who cannot crawl must still follow suit, albeit with a card that will not win the trick.

Any player who has no cards of the suit that was led must play trump.  If trump has been played into a trick, subsequent players must still follow the suit led, but are not obligated to crawl (no card in the led suit will beat trump regardless).  If trump has been played into a trick, any further trump must also crawl.  As with following a suit, if a player must play trump, but cannot top the highest trump yet played, they must still play a losing trump.

A player who has no cards in the suit led and no trump cards may play any card.

Scoring

When all the cards have been played, each team counts the points in the tricks they have won.  If the bidding side took, in meld and tricks, at least as many points as they bid, then both teams add the points they made to their cumulative score.  Furthermore, a team that does not take at least 20 points in play cannot score anything for the hand - their meld is disregarded.  If this happens to the bidding team, they have been 'Set' and automatically fail.  Their bid is subtracted from their score. Making 20 points or more in play is known as 'saving the bid'.

If the team of the high bidder does not 'save' their bid (meld+points in tricks is not >= bid) they have also been 'Set'.  Again, they score no points for their meld and trick points, and have their bid subtracted from their score.  The team that did not win the bid still gets to keep their meld and trick points.

Bidding System

It is sensible to use the bids you make to convey information about what melds are held.  'Talking across the table' or explicitly stating what you hold is forbidden, but certain conventional key bidding techniques are common and accepted.  This technique is called 'giving a meld bid', and is usually done to support the player's partner in winning the bid.  One frequent system is to increase the current bid by one point for every ten points of meld in your hand.  This only works while the bid is still below 60.  So if a player strts the bidding at 52, this indicates that the player holds approximately 20 meld.  If the next player bids 60, this would indicate 40 meld (an increase of 4 points in the bid).  A player who bids the minimum, or 'one-ups' the bid, often suggests the desire to win the bid.  In addition, a bid with a single digit (3 instead of 53) indicates that the bidder has Aces Around.

Other bids include:

Pass	If this is the players first bid of the hand, it typically indicates a terrible hand of cards, offering no ability to win the bid or support the partner.
Bye-Me	The bidder has approximately 8 to 16 points of meld, but does not desire to, or cannot, win the bid.
Bye	The same as a Bye-Me, but the bidder has Aces Around.  Similar to giving a single digit bid.
Save	Similar to a Pass, but the bidder has at least a marriage in case their team is stuck with the bid, and the partner cannot legitimately win the bid (does not have a marriage).  This is most common when the first bidder passes, and the second bidder does not want to win the bid.  This is a failsafe if the third person also passes, so the dealer is not necessarily forced to take the bid.  For numerical purposes, it is the lowest possible bid.  In the above example it counts as a 50, so if the dealer were to take the bid in this case, he or she would have to bid 51.