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
Skat (card game) tricks and players must agree whether a game lasts for a certain number of deals or until one player scores a certain number of game points. Scoring is similar to normal Skat. Skat in the United States and Canada was played for many years as an older version of the game, also known as "Tournee Skat", which shares most of its rules with its modern European counterpart with the addition of a few different games and an alternate system of scoring. "Tournee Skat" is declining in popularity. Most tournament Skat players in North America play the modern game described above.