Game 58: Pinochle

 The game of Pinochle involves its own special deck of cards rather than a standard Poker deck.  It has two of all the cards 9 through Ace, so there are 48 cards rather than the standard 52.  Once upon a time, when I was a child, I wanted to purchase a deck of cards for my very own.  I went to the Raley's grocery store, and, being a young child and having very little money, I bought the cheapest deck of cards I could find.  When I got home and opened the deck, I was very surprised and disappointed to find that this deck had 2 of all the face cards but no cards below 9.  It turns out that the reason this deck was cheaper was that it was a Pinochle deck of only 48 cards, rather than a standard deck of 52 cards. I was disappointed then, but I'm very happy to have Pinochle decks to play from today!
 Normally my school year is too busy to allow for getting together with friends (you may have noticed how my posting has slowed since summer!), but I'm trying to break out of that pattern, so we had Fromuths over this Friday to play Pinochle.  We always play guys against the girls.
 My first hand, above, was a decent enough partner hand but certainly not a hand to bid on.
 Pinochle consists of two scoring phases - after bidding, calling trump, and passing between partners occurs, players lay down their "meld" and earn points based on "marriages," 9 of trump, runs (only in trump: A, 10, K, Q, J), pinochle (jack of diamonds and queen of spades), etc.  A "double pinochle," which is two jacks of diamonds and two queens of spades is worth 30 points.  The play is then worth a total of 25 possible points, each A,10 and King worth 1 point no matter what the suit, and the last trick is worth one point as well.
The game goes to 150 points, but we're all getting older, so when everyone was too tired to continue playing, we called it a game and gave the win to the ladies who were up 104 to -3.  GO LADIES! :-)

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