Editing Pinochle (section)

==Deck==
A pinochle deck consists of two copies of each of the 9, 10, [[jack (playing card)|jack]], [[queen (playing card)|queen]], [[king (playing card)|king]], and [[ace]] cards of all four [[suit (cards)|suits]], for 48 cards per deck. Aces are always considered high. Pinochle follows a nonstandard card ordering. The complete ordering from highest to lowest is A, 10, K, Q, J, 9. The game can also be played using standard ranking with a simple change to scoring.

Originally, the deck had to be composed by combining two [[poker]], [[piquet]] or [[euchre]] decks and removing unneeded cards (a piquet deck does not have the 2–6, making it easier to modify, and a euchre deck is exactly half a pinochle deck), but with the game's popularity in the United States in the early 1900s, a single boxed deck with the necessary cards was marketed, and these specialized pinochle decks are now widely available in similar styles to common 52-card counterparts. Variants of pinochle can be played with five, six, eight or more players. These larger variations can combine two pinochle decks called a "double deck". The double deck can also be used when playing with four players; hand sizes, average scores and minimum bids are doubled.