total points, which is nothing more than the sum of the marriages, plus kings around and queens around. As a shortcut, this is called a "roundtable", "marriages around", "round house", or a "round robin". The pinochle and dix are the "special melds". "Pinochle" – jack of diamonds and queen of spades – 40 or 4 points "Double pinochle" – both jacks of diamonds and both queens of spades – 300 or 30 points "Dix" – (pronounced "deece" ) nine of trumps – 10 or 1 points each In the most common form of the game (see variations below), any one card may be used in only one meld of each type. Thus, a queen can be used in one marriage with one king, regardless whether the player has the other king of the same suit. However, a queen can be used to score a marriage and a pinochle if the player also has the correct jack. After the melds are displayed, the points are counted and each player totals their individual meld scores. Because all of these values are multiples of ten, one can arrive at simplified values by removing the trailing zero from each point total. For instance, a pinochle has a simplified score of 4, a double Pinochle would score 30. Playing tricks In playing cards for tricks, there are strict rules of forced play, which limit a player's ability to strategically retain high cards. The high bidder leads the play with the first card, which can be any card in the contract winner's hand just like basic Whist, although some rules require the first card led to be a trump card. Then there are two variations of following suit depending if you are playing post-1945 or pre-1945 rules. According to the pre-1945 rules, every player must follow the lead suit if possible. Usually every player must play a winning card against those played so far, if it is possible to do so, even when the current player expects a later player to win the hand with a better card. The only exception is if a player played a trump card when trump was not the suit led. In that case, those following that player may play any card of the lead suit, since they must follow the lead suit but are already losing to the player who played trump. Likewise, if a player cannot follow suit, but