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 cards (a piquet deck does not have the 2–6, making it easier to modify, and a euchre deck is exactly half a pinochle deck), but with the game's popularity in the United States in the early 1900s, a single boxed deck with the necessary cards was marketed, and these specialized pinochle decks are now widely available in similar styles to common 52-card counterparts. Variants of pinochle can be played with five, six, eight or more players. These larger variations can combine two pinochle decks called a "double deck". The double deck can also be used when playing with four players; hand sizes, average scores and minimum bids are doubled. Partnership auction pinochle Dealing The game is played with a deck of 48 cards and four players; one player is the dealer. After the shuffle, the dealer will offer a cut to the player on their right, then distribute the cards. All the cards are dealt in partnership pinochle. In variations for odd numbers of players like three, a "widow's hand" (also called a "kitty", "talon", or "stock") of cards remains. Traditionally, the deal is done clockwise, dealing a packet of three or four cards at a time, starting with the player to the left (the eldest hand) and ending with the dealer. The deal rotates clockwise, so the dealer's left-hand opponent will deal next. Auction pinochle In auction pinochle, players bid for the points they predict their hand could earn. The highest bidder earns the right to declare the trump suit. One of the players, usually the player to the left of the dealer, or the dealer themselves, is obligated to open with a first bid. The size of bids is based on the point scale and number of decks used; traditionally, points are in multiples of 10, thus a minimum opening bid might be agreed to be 100 or 250. However, many alternate scoring rules drop the unnecessary trailing zero; in that case, bids of 10 and 25, respectively, have the same values. When a player has the turn