Section 2: The Deck
Required equipment
Play requires one pinochle deck. A standard partnership pinochle deck contains 48 cards: two identical copies of each ace, ten, king, queen, jack, and nine in each of the four suits. A commercial pinochle deck may be used, or the required cards may be assembled from two ordinary decks.
Suits and ranks
The suits are clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. Within every suit, cards rank from highest to lowest as follows:
Ace, ten, king, queen, jack, nine.
The ten therefore ranks between the ace and king; it is not a low card. Because the deck contains duplicate cards, two physically different cards can have equal rank and suit.
Duplicate-card priority
If two identical cards are played to the same trick, the copy played first ranks higher for that trick. For example, if one ace of hearts is already winning, a later ace of hearts does not overtake it. A later player who holds only an identical card is nevertheless considered able to follow suit, but not able to beat the card already winning.
Preparing the deck
- Confirm that all 48 cards are present before starting.
- Remove all twos through eights and any jokers when constructing the deck from ordinary playing cards.
- Shuffle thoroughly before each hand.
- Keep cards face down during the deal and conceal each hand from all other players.
Card uses
The same card may participate in certain melds and later be played to a trick. Displaying a card for meld does not remove it from the hand. Meld scores and trick scores are separate, and neither changes the rank of a card.