The Pinochle Deck: 48 Cards Explained

A pinochle deck is 6 ranks × 4 suits × 2 copies = 48 cards

Here is the whole pinochle deck, one suit per row, best card first. Each card appears twice. The cards marked “10” are the counters, the cards that score points in tricks.

The ten ranks above the king

Pinochle uses its own order. In every suit, from high to low: ace, ten, king, queen, jack, nine. The ten is the second-best card in each suit. That is the one rule new players trip over most.

Trump beats every other suit. Within trump, the same order applies: the ace of trump is the best card in the game.

Only aces, tens and kings score in tricks

• The deck has 24 counters: two aces, two tens and two kings in each suit. Each is worth 10, so 240 points.
• Winning the last trick adds 10, so there are 250 points to win in every hand.
• Queens, jacks and nines score nothing in tricks, but they matter in meld: the jack of diamonds and queen of spades make a pinochle, and the nine of trump (the dix) is worth 10.

How the points add up at the end of a hand is explained on our pinochle scoring page.

You can build a pinochle deck from two regular decks

No pinochle deck at home? Use two ordinary 52-card decks, ideally with the same back design and size.

1. From the first deck, keep the 9, 10, J, Q, K and A of each suit. That is 24 cards. Set the other 28 aside.
2. Do the same with the second deck: another 24 cards.
3. Shuffle the two piles together. You have 48 cards, two of each: a pinochle deck.

Tip for easy reading. Large-print and jumbo-index playing cards work well. Since you only need the 9s and up, any two matching large-print decks will do.

Ready-made pinochle decks are sold by most playing-card makers, including Bicycle. Each one has the 48 cards already sorted out.

With two of every card, the first one played wins

Because each card appears twice, two identical cards can land in the same trick. When that happens, the card played first wins. So your ten is not safe until both aces of that suit have been played. Good players keep track of both copies.

Double deck pinochle uses 80 cards and no nines

A popular four-player version uses a bigger deck: four copies each of the A, 10, K, Q and J in every suit, 80 cards in all. You can make one from two pinochle decks with the nines taken out. Each player gets 20 cards. See double deck pinochle rules for how it plays.

Want to play without shuffling at all? Our free pinochle game deals the 48-card deck for you, with large cards.