Double Deck Pinochle Rules

The double deck has 80 cards: four of each, no nines

Take two regular pinochle decks, remove all the nines, and shuffle them together. Each suit now has 20 cards instead of 12.

Single deck vs double deck pinochle at a glance

The double deck numbers look small because pagat writes them on a smaller scale. Some groups write every number ten times bigger, so a run is 150 and the game is 5000. It plays the same either way; just agree before you start.

Deal everything, then bid in ones and fives

1. Teams: four players, partners sit across from each other.
2. Deal: all 80 cards, 20 to each player.
3. Bid: starting left of the dealer, each player bids or passes. The opening bid is at least 50. Bids go up by 1 until 60, then in steps of 5. If the first three players pass, the dealer must bid 50.
4. Trump: the high bidder names trump. If the bidder has no royal marriage (king and queen of trump), the hand is not played: the bidding team loses its bid and nobody scores meld.
5. Passing: the basic rules have no passing. Many groups let the bidder and partner swap three cards; see variations below.

Double deck meld: triple and quadruple melds score big

With four copies of every card you can hold the same meld two, three or even four times. Each column below means you hold that many complete copies of the meld.

• There is no dix, because there are no nines. Tens have no meld of their own.
• A single meld is worth one tenth of its single-deck value: a run is 15 here and 150 in single deck.
• Doubles jump: a double run is 150, double aces 100, double pinochle 30. Marriages simply add up: a double royal marriage is 8.
• The class rule is the same as in single deck: a card may count in a marriage and in an around, but not in two marriages.

Play and scoring work like single deck

• The bidder leads. You must follow suit, play a trump if you can't, and beat the winning card if you can. Of two identical cards, the first one played wins.
• Each ace, ten and king won is 1 point; the last trick is 2. That is 50 points in all.
• Made: if the bidding team's meld plus trick points reach the bid, both teams score what they earned.
• Set: if not, the bidding team scores nothing and loses the bid. The other team still scores.
• Throwing in: the bidder may concede before play. The bidding team loses the bid; the other team scores only its meld.
• Winning: first team to 500. If both reach it on the same hand, the bidding team wins.

For how the bid and counters work in more detail, see pinochle scoring. It uses the single-deck numbers, but the idea is the same.

Double deck house rules differ more than most

• Passing cards: often the bidder and partner each pass 3 cards to each other, face down, at the same time. Some groups pass anywhere from 1 to 4.
• Minimum to score: some groups let a team score its meld only if the meld is worth at least 20, and a team that takes fewer than 20 in the play scores nothing for the hand.
• Scale: pagat's small numbers, or everything ten times bigger.

Want to practice? Our free pinochle game plays the classic single deck. Bidding, meld and the trick rules are the same skills, so it is a good warm-up. Read how to play pinochle for the single-deck rules.