I DON'T GET IT!!! In 2 deck I can tell you what's in your hand. I know up and down left from right. in 4 hand I know how much meld I have and what suite to play. that's it I SUCK. PS I LEARNED IN JAIL and played non stop. Please help.
Welcome to the site cutupdaily! If you have any specific questions, please ask them in the forums and our members will answer them to the best of our ability. Another great way to improve is to read through our numerous posts which discuss a broad range of pinochle topics. Just reading them will help you to understand the 4 deck game better, but since you have only played 2 deck, I'm sure you will be good at 4 deck once you gain more experience. If there is anything we can do to help your pinochle game, please don't hesitate to ask.
Welcome to Power Pinochle, cutupdaily.
I see that you have been using the Meld Training and Meld Test programs to hone your meld counting skills. I was going to recommend that you switch from the Yahoo.com scorechart to the PlayOK.com scorechart -- but you've just done it.
It is very typical to struggle with the counting in the beginning. Do not be discouraged, your success is only a matter of time.
If you have any questions or concerns with the site or more specifically the custom programs I have written, do not hesitate to ask.
Enjoy,
Power Pinochle Web Developer
mickmackusa
I played single deck pinochle for many years before turning to double deck since it is the more popular online variant. It took some time just to be able to learn the basics (meld bids, leadbacks, etc.) in the double deck game, but that was as far as I got. (Part of the problem is that most online players don't hesitate to tell you how much you suck, but they hardly ever give you feedback so you can improve your game.) I honestly didn't begin to understand the finer points until I found this site a few months ago. Since then, I have read and re-read the many posts in the forums, asked a lot of questions of the community, and improved my play immensely. As rak said, one of the best ways to learn is to read the many informative posts within the forum. If you have any questions regarding the posts, feel free to ask - the members of this site are very helpful and generally explain things logically in simple language.
Not only do they tell you "you suck"...but their reasoning is *frequently* wrong.
Single-deck is a fairly simple game. That's not intended as an insult, but a fact. Spades is fairly simple. Hearts is a bit less simple, in the 3-card rotating-pass variant. It's an interesting argument whether including the jack of diamonds as -10 points, may make it LESS complex (in that certain strategies narrow a great deal). Bridge is immensely more complex than double-deck pinochle, but the information uncertainty in bridge is much lower. That lets the bridge player focus on much more specific questions...once he can figure out which ones matter.
Double deck has very high information uncertainty, and that's the second thing to tackle...the first just being "OK, what do I have?"