Pinochle Irish immigrants, while skat was the preferred game of a majority of German immigrants. A pinochle deck consists of two copies of each of the 9, 10, jack, queen, king, and ace cards of all four 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
Officers' Skat wins or loses, whereas game points determine how much is won or lost. Many people calculate the points using additional matadors ("Spitzen") as in Skat, so that in a game with all four Jacks and the Ace of trumps, the winner gets 5 matador points for a game value of 6 times the base value. The same goes for the calculation of "Unters" or Jacks not held. In addition there are also simplified forms of scoring: If agreed, a game can also be played where players can 'pass' instead of choosing trumps. If the actual declarer passes, the dealer can