Double Deck Pinochle strategy for beginners

By Marya · Updated by Holger in September 2026

I first started playing Double Deck Pinochle in 2015, when I began building it for World of Card Games. So I hadn't been playing long when I wrote this. This page is a beginner's perspective.

Similarities to other card games

Pinochle shares some elements with several other card games at World of Card Games.

• It has "melds", special combinations of cards, as in Gin Rummy. However, the melds are more complex. For example, a "pinochle" meld, worth 4 points, is made up of the Jack of Diamonds and the Queen of Spades. There's nothing like that in Gin Rummy! You also have melds such as "Aces around", which is an Ace in every suit. This is very similar to a Gin Rummy meld, although in Gin Rummy a meld can have just three Aces.
• There's a "trump suit" and a trick-taking phase, just like in Spades. In Euchre and 29, a player chooses the trump suit after the cards are dealt. It's the same in Pinochle.
• In Pinochle, there's an auction phase where players "bid" for the right to choose the trump suit. The bid is a number, 50 at a minimum. The player who bids highest gets to choose trump, but at a cost. Their team has to score at least the number of points bid in that hand. This is very similar to the bidding in 29. In Spades, by contrast, your bid is a guess at the number of tricks you'll take. It doesn't affect the trump suit, which is always spades.

My first impression of Pinochle was heavily colored by playing a lot of Spades. Spades has only a few restrictions on what you can play when "following" a lead card.

In Spades, you must follow the suit of the lead card, but only if you have a card of that suit. Otherwise you're free to play anything. In Pinochle, the rules are stricter. You must follow suit and beat the highest card in the trick if you can. This is called "crawling". If you have no cards of the led suit, you must play a trump if you have one. Here's a picture showing the difference:

In the screenshots above, the player on the left is playing a game of Spades. Since he has no hearts, he can follow with any other card. The player on the right is playing Pinochle. He has no clubs, so he can't follow the trick suit. That means he must play a diamond, because diamonds are trump.

If you're used to Spades, having less choice of cards can be frustrating. Just remember that the rules are the same for everyone.

Signaling with your bid

"Table talk" is frowned on in most other games. In Pinochle, though, it's perfectly fine to use your bid to tell your partner about the "meld" in your hand. The more you know about your partner's hand, the better prepared you are to make your own bid.

Here's a very simple example. Suppose you have two pinochles in your hand. A pinochle is a "meld" made up of the Queen of Spades and the Jack of Diamonds. Two pinochle melds are worth 30 points, which isn't bad! Wouldn't it be nice if you could just tell your partner "I've got 2 pinochles"? Suppose they had 30 meld points in their hand too. They could bid 60 and feel comfortable that between the two of you, you have enough meld to make your bid.

You can't tell your partner out loud how many meld points you have, but you can signal it by choosing your bid carefully. In this case, you'd bid 3 points over the previous player's bid. The extra 3 points mean "I have 30 meld points".

Pinochle experts work out a very precise bidding system with their partners over time. To start with, I recommend the bidding system on Pagat's Double Deck Pinochle page. It's fairly simple and follows the example given above.

Think before you give a "meld bid", though. If your partner has already passed (declined to bid), there's no point in sharing information about your meld with the table. You're on your own in figuring out what to bid. Your partner may have no meld points at all or just a few. Also, if you have no marriage melds, it's probably unwise to bid at all. If you win the bid, you won't be able to choose trump, because you can only choose a trump suit in which you have a marriage. Your bid would then be subtracted from your team's score, which is an unpleasant penalty.

Finding melds

When I first began playing Pinochle, all the different types of meld overwhelmed me. So did the rules for when my cards could "overlap" and belong to more than one meld.

Here's an example of cards belonging to more than one meld:

If you look carefully, you'll see that the hand has a "run" in clubs (A, 10, K, Q, J). You only get meld points for this run if clubs are trump!

You might also think that if clubs are trump, you could get a royal marriage from the Queen and King of Clubs. But that isn't the case. Marriages and runs are both "Type I" melds. The same card can't count toward two melds of the same type!

If you hunt some more, you'll spot a "pinochle" meld in the hand, made of the Jack of Diamonds and the Queen of Spades. That single Queen can also form a marriage in spades with the King of Spades. That works because pinochle melds are "Type II" melds, while marriage melds are "Type I". Using the Queen in both melds is allowed.

If you're like me, you'll find it a bit hard to find and keep track of all the melds in your hand, especially at the start. Luckily, there's a "Show meld" button that helps. You can click it during the bidding:

The "Show meld" button picks out all the cards in melds that do not need a trump suit. It's up to you to look for the melds that do need one. Those are "runs" (A-10-K-Q-J of the trump suit) and "royal marriages" (K-Q of the trump suit). Since all marriages are shown, you really only need to watch for runs. Those get fairly obvious with practice.

At this point, you may be wondering what to bid with the hand above. Well, it depends. If my partner were the dealer and no one else had bid yet, I'd probably bid 50, the lowest bid. That would save my partner from being forced to choose trump with poor cards. It could even save them from forfeiting if they had no marriages. Otherwise, I'd probably pass. The hand has 10 meld points in total. It has 23 if I assume clubs are trump (15 points for the run, which takes the place of the 2-point marriage in clubs). If clubs are trump, though, my hand wouldn't be strong in trump. It seems like a risky hand to bid on, although it might work (remember I'm no expert!).

If someone else had already bid, I'd probably pass. I have 10 meld in my hand that doesn't depend on the trump suit. If I bid 1 more than the previous player, that doesn't say 10 meld. It says I want to call the trump suit, which I probably don't want to do. And I can't bid 2 more to tell my partner I have 20 meld, since I only have 10. I can't count the 15 meld from the run, because I don't know if my partner plans to call clubs as trump. When you signal your meld to your partner, don't include points from runs or royal marriages!

I'd love to hear from long-time Pinochle players about how they'd bid this hand!

The bidder out rule

Bidding well is an important skill in Double Deck Pinochle. It's so important that it decides the winner in some cases where the score can't.

Normally, the win goes to the team that crosses the "finish line" first by reaching 500 points or more. But now and then both teams reach 500 points or more at the end of the same hand. Then how do you read the rule that the winner is the team that gets to 500 first?

This is where the "bidder out" rule comes in. If both teams reach 500 points or more in the same hand, the victory goes to the team that declared trump. That isn't always the team with the highest score! If this happens in a game of Pinochle at World of Card Games, you'll see a short note at the end of the game that explains it.

If you're new to Pinochle, the rule may seem bizarre. In most games, the high score decides the game. I'm not making this up, though! I've asked around about it and everyone seems to agree. You can read the discussions here:

• Bidder out rule discussed at BoardGameGeek
• Bidder out rule discussed at Stack Exchange

At World of Card Games, Pinochle is played with the bidder out rule turned on by default. You can turn the option off. Then the higher score wins, but a tie still goes to the team that declared trump.

Resources

There's a fun Double Deck Pinochle tutorial at World of Card Games. You can also find Double Deck Pinochle tips at Pagat.

Pinochle melds