Pinochle cards from each player's discard pile are included in totals for a total of 240 counters per round, plus one counter for winning the final trick. One variation to make it more difficult for the bid-winning player, the discard pile created by drawing cards is used by the non-bidding player to score towards tricks. In Three-handed pinochle each player plays for him or herself. The dealer deals 15 cards to each player and three cards to the kitty—a separate pile in the middle. All players review their cards and silently determine their bids. The player to the dealer's left initiates
Pinochle queens for five points, and jacks and nines are worth zero. An even simpler method has aces, tens, and kings worth 10 (and known as "counters"), and everything else zero ("garbage"). Since all points are multiples of ten in the third method, most players drop the redundant zero. Aces, tens, and kings won in tricks are worth one point. The meld scoring can also avoid the zero in the tenth place. Melds like 1,000 aces are thus worth 100. The terms "1,000 aces", "800 kings" and so on are often used, even though the point values are one-tenth. Two-handed pinochle