Growing up, I used to watch my relatives play Pinochle. That was the Zellers side of the family, my mother’s side.

Every weekend her brothers would gather together, usually at my grandparents’ house, and we’d often be there as well, and the main item on the agenda was always the card game.

Oh, sometimes it was Hasenpfeffer (or Hausey, as my mother would call it), but more often it was six- or eight-handed Pinochle. They were quite serious about it, too, although thankfully they did not play for money.

It was an adult game, so us young ’uns were not invited to play, at least not during the period when we were growing up, so I never learned the rules of the game.

Then I went off to Penn State, and my second year there, I moved to Mifflin Hall where former high school classmates Steve Sattazahn and Allen Maurer were rooming. As it turned out, they were big card players along with a few other fellows on the fifth floor, Ray and Irv (nicknamed “Doughboy”, as in the Pillsbury) and Herbie and another guy whose name eludes me.

It was either Hearts or Pinochle and as they often needed a fourth, they soon taught me how to play. In truth I preferred Hearts, but I gradually learned to like Pinochle as well. And we only played for fun, not cash, so it was more social than anything else. I don’t recall any serious arguments arising out of the game play. Occasionally someone might shout “Renege!”, and we’d have to go through the captured tricks, but even if someone had reneged, it was usually by accident and we’d all dissolve into laughter.

Ray was the one who took Pinochle the most seriously and would often try to enforce strict rules, those rules being that one must play a winning card against those played so far, but that pretty much eliminated any strategy, so we hated to do that. If Ray wasn’t around, we ignored that rule. (In reading the Wikipedia entry I see that that is a pre-1945 rule and that it has been relaxed since then; apparently Ray didn’t get the memo.)

Having learned the rules of the game, when I went home for Christmas and the Zellers clan had gathered at my aunt and uncle Joan and Mark’s place in Manheim and was playing their eight-handed, double-deck brand of Pinochle, and an opening occurred at the table, and as I was no longer a young ’un, I volunteered to sit in.

Big mistake!!!!!

I had no experience with double-deck, eight-handed Pinochle (double-deck? Or was it triple deck? It must have been because there were more cards in a hand) and the Zellers rules were slightly different from what I was used to, and these were players with decades of experience behind them and I had but months, and suddenly I found myself lost in a sea of— 

Oh. My. God!!!

I have twice as many cards in my had as I’m used to and I can’t find anything—they are all throwing their damned cards out at the same time—I haven’t even figured out what card I need to play according their rules—I’m hopelessly lost. Help somebody! Get me out of here!!!!

Needless to say, I didn’t last very long. And I never volunteered to play with the grownups again.

My only other time playing Pinochle came in 1977 when I was living with Dan just outside Hershey. He was part of a weekly Pinochle game with Ralph and two other guys whose names I can’t recall right now (Bill and Bryce, perhaps?). One night Ralph had to leave early and they wanted me to sit in. The problem was that they played for money, not a lot of money, only a few dollars, but I had never played cards for dollars and I didn’t want to start. So they made an exception for me. They grexed and groaned and the play did not go well.

And that was the last time I ever played Pinochle.

 

I was reminded of the game by something I read the other day, and I realized I had pretty much forgotten all the rules (I have a hard time remembering the rules to card games), so I looked them up on Wikipedia, and most of them came back to me.

What an odd game Pinochle is. Here is the explanation for its origin:

Pinochle is thought to have two possible origins. One is that it is a cousin of Binokel, with both games evolving from the game of bezique. A second alternative is that pinochle actually developed from the Swiss and, later, South German game of Binocle or Binokel, which in turn is a descendant of bezique.

The word pinochle has several different potential derivations. It may come from the French word binocle literally meaning “two eyes”, or “eyeglasses” or “binoculars”, and was a reference to the mythical notion that the German game of Binocle was invented with a special deck where the Queen of Spades and Jack of Diamonds were pictured in side profile with just one eye each. There are also suggestions that the word pinochle comes from bis (until) and Knöchel (knuckle) because originally the game ended when a player rapped their knuckles on the table. The term may also be related to the French word binage for the combination of cards called “binocle”. This latter pronunciation of the game was adopted by German speakers.

German immigrants brought the game of Binokel to America in the latter quarter of the 19th century, where it was mispronounced and misspelled “pinochle.” Pinochle was the favorite card game of American Jewish and Irish immigrants, while Skat was the preferred game of a majority of German immigrants. Auction Pinochle for three players has some similarities with the German game Skat, although the bidding is more similar to that of bid whist.

During World War I, the city of Syracuse, New York, outlawed the playing of pinochle in a gesture of anti-German sentiment. It was also temporarily banned in some other US cities as a result of its German heritage, but has since regained popularity.