The Auction winner's teammate then passes 3 cards from their hand to the winner (typically to help them form melds in the trump suit they decided on) and the Auction winner looks at the cards and passes 3 cards back from their hand.This is the reward for winning the Auction despite the risk of possibly going set. The winner of the Auction declares the trump suit for the round.This called 'going set' and is the risk the players take when bidding amounts during Auction. When three players pass, the winner of the Auction is the player who last bid and the amount they bid is the amount of points their team must score for the round or else they incur that amount in negative points and do not score anything for their melds and tricks.Now bidding continues between P3 and P4 until one of them also passes). When a player bids an amount, they are betting that their team will score at least that amount by the end of the round based on the cards in hand (EXAMPLE: P2 starts the bid with 20, P3 bids 21, P4 bids 23, P1 passes, P2 passes. The first bid of the Auction phase must be a minimum of 20 points and each subsequent bid must be higher.Once a player passes, they are no longer able to bid. The player left of the dealer has the opportunity to start the bidding or they may pass.As with other trick-taking games, any card of the current trump suit will always beat any cards in other suits (EXAMPLE: K of Hearts would normally beat a 9 of Spades, but because Spades is the current trump suit, the 9 of Spades is higher).Įach round of the game is divided into 3 distinct phases: Auction, Meld and Playing. If a player has five or more 9's in hand and no melds (explained below), the hand can be thrown back in with all other hands and cards re-dealt.Ĭards in Pinochle are ranked from high to low as follows: A > 10 > K > Q > J > 9.The deck is shuffled and each player is dealt 12 cards in sets of 3 cards at a time. Players divide themselves into two teams and sit so that they are opposite of their teammate (EXAMPLE: Team 1 - Player 1, Team 2 - Player 2, Team 1 - Player 3, Team 2 - Player 4).This means there are no 2-8 cards and that there are two copies of 9-A in the deck for each suit. Pinochle uses a unique 48 card deck that consists of 2 sets of 9, 10, J, Q, K, A in each suit.In Pinochle, the goal is to be the first team to score 150 points via the meld and playing phases of the game.

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