Would love to give this five stars, but the settings of the game are missing the most basic rule of pinochle - a team must get 20 pointers to score. The fact that this is not an option makes it impossible to come back from behind and teams get points when they should not. Also frustrated with the imbalanced deal by the AI - frequently, the AI opponent is stacked with meld.

I really do enjoy this version of Pinochle. Not many people know how to play it and I’m not often around my relatives who do. This is a great substitute. I like the customization (like a priority on sending for Pinochle when S/D are chosen, changing cards/faces, trump color, game modes, score mods), the animation, and the overall presentation. However, my computer partner drives me crazy with the bidding (sometimes they’ll pass with a good hand), and my opponents seem to get Double Pinochle quite frequently (this is rare in realtime gameplay). Other than that, I highly recommend this game!

Nice GUI and adjustable settings to play your favorite variations. Ads are non-intrusive and i've actually clicked a couple for fun. I've tried a few Pinochle apps and this is the best I've found so far.With double deck, no passing cards, and bidding aggressiveness set to 0, I've seen an opponent bid over a hundred with less than 30 total meld--found by showing all cards. Bidding is easy--count your meld, add the meld bid of your partner or 6, add 20 for aggressiveness 0, add 25 for aggressiveness 1, add 30 for aggressiveness 2, etc. Count extra aces, short suits, and extra trump length as a few points. Computer leads out trump too often when weak, too often tries to make opponent trump, and leads a jack when a queen is available--found by showing all cards. I can beat W-E to 500 every time. Especially easy when passing cards! AI should use known cards from melding and exhaust over possible hands a few plays deep with an adjustable difficulty setting. Needs an option to hide the trick totals for excitement and realism. I prefer to allow each partner to meld bid and show strength and length through escalation. I also play that a team has to take in the bid when or after going over 500 to win. Also, partner should round meld up to nearest 10 and include ace strength in a meld bid. I would also like the ability to replay the hands to play out different strategies.

I'm not sure if the developers haven't played pinochle or developed A.I. before. My guess is it's both. I'll start with the good. They have introduced an undo button awhile ago. A nice feature that allows a correction of tapping the wrong card. Unfortunately that is the only gameplay feature that is good. The status bar is also still visible, which is always a nice touch to see how much battery you've wasted playing this horrific game. That's it, the only good things. I've been playing this game for at least eight months, on every setting combination possible. The gameplay is just terrible. Card distribution is so blatantly one sided that you will play upwards of 20 hands before you meld over 10 points. When bidding, your partner will rarely meld bid, or will constantly try to out bit you when you have a run. When this happens and I let him take the bid he'll meld maybe a marriage and a nine. On a rare occasion he might have jacks around in there too. Never anything that would call to overbid a run bid. Partner always slow plays trump. A real pain until you figure that out, but once you know he's always going to slow play it can be worked around. Partner will also always push your trump. These are the major issues. There are countless other little bugs that just make you wonder how these developers ever got a job. My suggestion to them is to actually learn how to play pinochle and develop A.I. and then try again. My suggestion to anyone looking to download this game, keep looking. This one is a waste of time.

While there are some frustrating flaws (more on this), I enjoy using a couple of features to “cheat” in a way that allows me to develop a more complete view of bidding and play possibilities. I ‘turn on’ view of all hands. This let’s me think through how I would bid ‘without view’ and then bid the best possible play. This also allows me to see some of the most ‘glaring’ flaws (which are in partner bidding and play - though also in passing). I often pass to allow partner to win bid .. only to have partner relinquish too early. I have also passed a perfect ‘Shoot the Moon’ hand and been stunned as partner destroys it with the pass back. Playing errors tend to be more subtle, and fall into two categories, one being feeding points with too high of a card and the other demonstrating no knowledge of suit counts (this may also have contributed to the aforementioned ‘Shoot the Moon’ destruction). Passing time playing this game despite the flaws, gives me all I can really expect (especially considering that it is free).

I love playing pinochle and when I cannot get together with my pinochle friends I play on my ipad. I am addicted. In general I like this game although it has a few glitches. First, the other bots make bidding a real challenge. They will bid ridiculously high with no meld to support such a bid. They always seem to have aces making getting by them to your partner almost impossible. And my ‘partner’ does stupid stuff. In trying to get the opponents trump out she will lead with a 10 that is then lost to an Ace when they could accomplish the same thing with a Jack or Queen (I know this because it is a simple matter to count trump when you have most of them!) Also, my ‘partner’ bids against me over and over and when I finally give up I find out that she has a tiny run while I had almost a double run that I gave up thinking she MUST have something amazing. No she did not! But all in all it is still a fun substitute for the real thing.