Firehouse Pinochle

Pinochle in General

Pinochle is a card game that is an excellent time-killer. You can play with the utmost concentration, or you can play, watch the Bears game on TV and think about Milla Jovovich at the same time.

Firehouse Pinochle is the pinochle flavor of my family's choice, so that's what this page is about. There are plenty of variations, and trust me: No two people play the same one.

How to Play Firehouse Pinochle

First, get yourself a standard pinochle deck. This consists of two of each card from 9 through ace of a standard poker deck. Put more clearly, it's two euchre decks, or two royal flushes from each suit plus two nines from each suit.

Stop staring at me blankly. The deck looks like this:

♠ A A K K Q Q J J 10 10 9 9
♥ A A K K Q Q J J 10 10 9 9
♣ A A K K Q Q J J 10 10 9 9
♦ A A K K Q Q J J 10 10 9 9

So that's 48 cards, 12 from each suit.

Once you have the deck, you need to find three people willing to play with you. This may be more challenging than it sounds, because one of them has to agree to be your partner, and the other two have to get along well enough to be partners. But once you have that hurdle out of the way, it's a piece of cake.

The object of the game

The object of the game is to make the most points. There are two different ways to make points, the melding and the play (Note: no one actually says "the melding". It is elegantly described as "when we put our meld down". Example: "Remember when we put our meld down?", not "Remember the melding?")

The flow of the game

One player is chosen to be dealer and deals twelve cards to each player. For you math majors out there, this means that the entire deck is dealt out. Each player looks at their hand, and a bidding round follows. The player who makes the highest bid during the bidding round chooses a suit to be trump. Each player then places certain combinations of cards (called melds) face-up on the table. Each meld is worth a certain number of points, and the total score for each partnership is recorded by the scorekeeper. Then everyone picks their melds back up, and the play begins with the player who named trump leading any card s/he chooses. When everyone is out of cards, the scores from the play are totaled, and the person to the left of the original dealer deals a second hand.

A game consists of four of these hands, unless there's a tie, in which case a duel will be held at sunset. Or you can play another hand, if you're a big wussy.

Melds

The first step to understanding pinochle is learning the different types of meld. A handy-dandy reference is below. Note that the trump suit will sometimes affect the values of meld. For our purposes, we'll assume diamonds are trumps, because I like diamonds:

If you should happen to have a marriage in each suit, that's called Around the World and is 240 points (80 for the kings, 60 for the queens, 60 for the non-trump marriages, and 40 for the trump marriage.)

Bidding

The bidding consists of one round: everyone gets to bid once. Unless you're going last, this means you actually have to put some thought into your bid. This is seriously the hardest part of the game. There are a few things to consider.

1. Do I have a run? If you have a run, start out at 275. Otherwise, start out at 100.
2. How much (other) meld do I have? Add the total of your remaining meld to the number you got in step 1.
3. Do I really want to take the bid? Usually, when you bid, it's because you want to make trumps. If this is the case, your bid should end in a '5'; add 5 to the number you got in the above steps, if you need to. But sometimes, you might have a fair amount of meld, but an overall crappy hand (40 jacks + one of each nine = a perfect example.) If this is the case, and your partner hasn't bid yet, then you might want to let them know by making a meld bid; i.e., a bid that says, "I have 50 points, but you'd better take the bid from me or I'm going to smack you on the head with a pair of socks." If this is the case, make your bid end in a '0', subtracting 5 if needed.
4. Is there anything cool about my hand that wasn't accounted for in steps 1 or 2? If you have eight cards of one suit, but not much meld, you might consider making a bid anyway. Also, if you have six aces but no meld (because you're missing the two aces in one suit) and no outstanding suit, then you might consider making a "pseudo-meld bid" to tell your partner that you can take some points, but that you really don't want to choose the trump suit. This is what's known as "the hard part".
5. Did my partner bid a meld hand? If so, subtract 100 from their bid and add the remainder to your bid. Remember that, if you're partner has already bid, then you should only bid if you want to choose trump -- you should not make a meld bid at this point.
6. There is no number 6. You're done. First, check to see if your bid is higher than the last bid -- or, is at least the minimum of 150, if no one else has bid yet. Remember, if you are bidding a meld hand, your bid should end in '0' (e.g., 170.) If you're bidding a playing hand, your bid will end in '5'. If your partner has already bid, s/he can't bid again, so only bid if you really want to choose trump.

Bidding FAQs

Here are several things to keep in mind about bidding.

I bid a run, but the next guy bid over me and called a different trump suit. Will my run still count?
It counts 20 points -- for the marriage. Quit whining and bid higher next time, if you dare. Bwahaha.

I bid a run, but the next guy bid over me -- and then called my run's suit as trump! Will my run still count?
Yes. In proper pinochle vernacular, one would say that the guy next to you "bit the big one" or "just took a club to the family diamonds."

I always played that double marriages in trump (i.e., KKQQ of the trump suit) are worth 300 points.
You'd think that would make sense, since you have the same odds of pulling a double marriage (in a given suit) as you do of a double pinochle. We even tried that for a while. But with 300 point gains occurring five times as often, double pinochle lost some of its luster and excitement. To preserve the flavor of the game, we reverted to our old traditions.

OK, honestly, Grandpa didn't like it, so we switched back. Yer double trump marriage is worth 80, punk.

I always played that, if you have six nines in your hand, you can throw in and deal again.
Suck it up. We all have. When you do that, you are ruining someone else's awesome hand.

I was Grandpa's partner, and I had an OK hand and wanted to call trumps. So, I bid 155. Grandpa went over me and then got mad because I didn't have what he expected! What gives?
Grandpa claims that a bid of "155" has a special meaning; namely, that the bidder has three aces and not much else. It is effectively a meld bid. News flash, kiddies: Grandpa is wrong. (I can say this with impunity, since I'm pretty sure he doesn't read my web page that often.)

If you bid, and want your partner to take it, you should make a bid ending in '0'. In this case, you could probably say 150, figuring that, although you can't meld them, your aces are worth 30 points, and should take at least 20 points away from the other team during play. But, in the interest of family harmony, you should bid 155 if you're Grandpa's partner. Of course, this also means that you shouldn't bid 155 when you actually want the bid; you'd then have to go up to 165. Good luck with all that.

Play

There are several important things to remember about the play, but the most important is this: 10s are higher than kings in pinochle. The rank of the cards is A, 10, K, Q, J, 9.

So you've bid, you've melded, and now it's time to play. The person who named trump lays a card face-up on the table. Then the person to his left lays a card, and so on until everyone has played a card. The person who played the highest card in the suit led takes the trick (i.e., s/he or his/her partner takes the cards and sets them aside) and then that person leads for the next trick.

The "highest card" is determined by the following rules: If any trumps were played, the highest trump wins. Otherwise, the highest card of the suit led wins. If there are two cards that are tied for highest card according to the above rules, then the first one played wins. If there is still a tie, then you misread the rules, dork.

The person who's leading can play any card s/he wants. After that, there are some rules that govern what you can and can't play:

• If possible, you must play the same suit as the card led. If the leader led a heart, you must play a heart.
• In addition, you must beat the card led if possible. If the leader played a ten of spades, and you have an ace of spades, you must play it.
• If you don't have a card of the suit led, then you must play a trump, if you have any. In addition, if a trump has already been played on the trick, you must beat it if you can. Example: Assume diamonds are trumps. The leader (your partner) played a queen of spades, and the next player played a ten of diamonds (trump). If you have an ace of trump, you must play it. (If you don't have an ace, you still have to play a trump if you have one, vis-a-vis the above rule.)
• If you don't have the suit led, and you don't have any trump, you can play any card in your hand.

These rules are at the heart of why you can play pinochle with little to no thought: On an average trick you generally only have a few legal plays. And please, when the guy on your right plays a king, and you have to play the ten of that suit, knowing that the guy on your left has the ace, don't whine. We've seen it before. It's an example of what we call "Irish Beauty" - things that cause you so much pain that you feel you own the rights to the suffering they cause. Don't steal our suffering.

Scoring

Once all the cards have been played, each partnership counts the points of the cards they took. Aces and tens are worth 10, kings and queens are worth 5, jacks and nines are worth squat. The partnership which took the very last trick gets an extra ten points, for no particular reason.

Once the totals have been added, this score plus the meld which the bid-winning partnership had at the beginning of the hand must be at least equal to the bid itself. If it isn't, then that partnership has gone set and loses a whole buttload of points. An example followed, which is loosely based on real life events.

R&M are playing against N&S. R wins the bid for 285...but, when laying down her meld, realizes that what she thought was a ace of hearts was actually an ace of diamonds, so she does not have a run like she thought. Whoops. (Thankfully for her, M is a very understanding partner.) R&M end up with 70 meld, and N&S have 40.

After the hand is played, R&M have taken 150 points in cards (there are 250 points in each hand [counting the 10 for last trick], so N&S have 100 points in cards, if you care.) This 150 plus their 70 meld is 220 points, which is short of their 285 bid. R&M have gone set.

They lose their meld for this hand, the points from play are not scored, and the bid which they failed to make is subtracted from their score. So if this was the first hand of the game, R&M would be at -285, while N&S would be sitting relatively pretty at 140. This potential for ridiculously sub-zero scores is but one source of hilarity.

Ah, yes: If one side takes all the tricks, they win the game outright. This is called a railroad and is true even if the score indicates they've lost, or if they would've gone set. When the play is past the halfway point and your side hasn't taken any tricks, it's proper etiquette to eye the table worriedly and mutter, "I hope I don't hear a train a'comin'," with a slight drawl befitting Oklahoma's Judd Fry. At this point, your opponents are virtually required to grumble about how many tricks you could possibly take, as in, "Well, you still have about three chances."

Useless Trivia

• If your hand is one-suited (or a perfect hand), then it has a meld value of 1520. You can safely bid 1770 because you know you'll take all the tricks. The odds of a perfect hand, according to my imperfect math, appear to be 1 in just over 143 billion (1.4353682155598060254577881613779 x 10^-11).
• The highest pure meld value your hand can have is 1800 (two runs plus a double pinochle.) Either diamonds or spades have to be trumps for this to happen, because otherwise you wouldn't have enough room in your hand for both the runs and the pinochles.
• I am curious about the highest possible makeable bid for a partnership, but it is difficult to calculate. Simply assuming that one partner has an 1800-point hand doesn't seem to be sufficient, because then the other partner cannot have very much meld. This is the best I can come up with:
  
  
  • Spades are trump.
  • Partner A has a thousand aces (1000 pts).
  • Partner B has eight hundred kings and double pinchole (1180 pts, including the marriages in spades).
  • Partner A has a non-trump marriage (20 pts) and the nines of spades (20 pts)
  • The lay of the remaining trumps is such that the bidding partnership can take all 250 points in cards.
  
  Assuming all of the above are true, the partnership could theoretically bid 2490. Of course, for this to happen in the real world, the partner who bid second would have to know exactly what the other partner had. This couldn't happen because both partners' scores are dependent on the trump call. (A's nines might be worthless, or B's marriages might just be worth less.)
  
  Even assuming perfect communication betwen the partners, B could still not be sure of the distribution of trump among the opponents. Remember, the jacks and tens of spades are unaccounted for. If one opponent had three of these four cards, then A & B couldn't take all of the tricks. They'd probably end up settling for a measly 2200 or so.