# Potential Meld Point Range in Pinochle

I would like to be able to figure out what the meld potential (upper/lower boundaries as well as probability for each score) is for a given hand, ideally the solution would calculated for each suit. This is to support a web application that will let people play against AI players and/or other people. One of the weaknesses I've found in existing pinochle applications is the computer's inability to bid (guess how many points they can score) effectively.

### Question Scope Reductions

• I would like to tackle the problem of the potential points during the trick phase in another question.
• Furthermore there is also the concept of passing cards to your partner in the 4 and 5 player variations. I would like to avoid that complication at this time since the cards you pass to your partner aren't random (hopefully).

Given the points above I would like the solution to be targeted at the 3 player variation where each player is dealt 15 cards, and the bid winner gets to add 3 random cards to their hand (but the bid winner still is restricted to a maximum of 15 cards melded). That being said I plan on asking additional questions that will remove those limitations above in the future.

### My Approach

My current plan is to just brute force through all the possible combinations, aggregate the data generated for each hand and save the results. That should give me the output I need but that will take quite a while, and maintaining all the data will require a ton of storage. I'm hoping that someone will be able to find a short cut that would allow me to calculate the distribution at runtime fairly cheaply instead.

According to the formula derived in a paper called "Using Pinochle to motivate the restricted combinations with repetitions problem" by P. S. Gorman, J. D. Kunkel, and F. J. Vasko (Aug 2010), there are ~2.25 billion unique 3 player single deck hands, and over 64 billion unique hands in double deck 4 player. (I can provide that counting formula if it would be helpful) Needless to say that is a fairly large space to brute force over.

## Short Description of Pinochle (Skip if familiar)*

Pinochle is played with a 48 card deck (single deck) or 80 card deck (double deck). The deck contains two aces, kings, queens, jacks, tens, nines in each suit. Double deck is the same but the nines are removed. The game has three distinct phases. First people bid for the right to declare trump. The player who bids the highest earns the right to declare trump, but if they don't earn at least that many points during the round they have their bid deducted from their previous score (before the round started). The next phase is the meld phase where players lay down combinations of cards which are worth points.

The values of the melds are (single, double, triple, quadruple):

A, K, Q, J, 10 of trump suit (run) (15, 150, 300, 450)
K, Q of trump (royal marriage) (4, 8, 12, 16)
K, Q of any other suit (marriage) (2, 4, 6, 8)
Nine of trump  (1, 2, 3, 4)

A♠, A♥, A♦, A♣ (10, 100, 200, 300)
K♠, K♥, K♦, K♣ (8, 80, 160, 240)
Q♠, Q♥, Q♦, Q♣ (6, 60, 120, 180)
J♠, J♥, J♦, J♣ (4, 40, 80, 120

Q♠, J♦ (aka pinochle) (4, 30, 60, 90)


Note: Meld point values vary based on house rules, but the essential pattern is similar

The final phase is the trick phase where players earn points by capturing other players cards (gross oversimplification but good enough for now).

*: Click header for more detailed description

## 1 Answer

I think that one problem in creating an AI solution to what should be bid in pinochle, it that humans have a hard time answering the same question.

Two thoughts:

1. I like the way you isolated it to 3 player single deck. This avoids the more complex calculation of "what does my partner have?" or "should I let my partner have the bid? (does she have a better hand than mine). it also eliminates various strategies of partner bidding that are used to signal. (For example, some players use 51 as an opening bid to let the partner know that they have aces)
2. The basic question you are trying to answer is: what I have in my hand + what can I expect from the 3 random cards? + what I can expect to win during the trick phase.

What I have in my hand is easy (you have already given the list)

What can I expect from the 3 random cards? the low end of the range is zero and the top end of the range depends on what is in your hand. I think this would be easier to model than the trick phase. In a single deck, their are no doubles, so the max would be 43, in the case where you had an ace, king and queen in a single suit, named that suit trump and the ace, king and queen also completed sets (one of each suit).

For the trick phase, my mom taught me that safe was 1/2 the points available (since you named trump) with upward adjustments if you have aces, a majority of trump or a "short suit" with a strong backup suit. (one suit with zero or very few cards with a non trump suit where you have ace, ten, king for example). There are 24 points in a singe deck, so 12 is a good starting point.

For humans, bidding is a combination of addition and instinct. I imagine that if I were programming a machine that I would put ranges in. Probabilities are no match for reality - what actually happens.