How to Play Counters Correctly in Pinochle

Video Transcript

"Remember the counter cards, Ace, ten, King, ten, ten, ace, 10, 10 and 10, king. And again, this one should be this. Okay. You don't want to throw counters on the opponents if possible. You want to throw counters on the trump or on the cards that your partner leads. Every counter counts 1 point. And you need at least 20 of those to save meld or to maybe even make a bid. I've seen more hands go down by 1 or 2 points because somebody carelessly played the hand and discarded it. The object here is you want to get into your partners hand so that they can give you their aces and you can not only unload counters but also have a chance to shorten down the suits before you start the diamonds. So you have the opening lead here. You want to really get rid of these two short suits. And I would definitely start with the club suit first because I don't want to be punched in spades if I can avoid it. So I'm going to lead a low card. It's just kind of fishing. I'm really fishing. I'm mean I really don't expect my partner to have the Ace but I'm swimming. Now, this person over here. They can't just play the jack on it. They have to climb. They can climb with as little as the queen. They know darn well that second hand low is really relevant so they?re not going to throw, they can play the ace if they wish and maybe they should in this instance but if they play the ace the declarer is not going to throw a counter on them. The reason that they're going to play the ace, let?s say he plays and he plays, I'm in the position as his partner, well what you think I'm going to do in clubs. If I have one I'm going to throw him a counter. Now we've taken two points. He's not going to throw a counter. So 2 points goes to him. Now he's on lead, he's got a nice diamond suit. He's got somewhat of a long heart suit but he's got somewhat of a short spade suit. He's going to play this, right? He's going to get a low card from here and I'm going to give him a counter if I can. And you're going to get rid of a low card so that's 2 points. Now they're 4 points on their way to 20. So you can see the power of the aces. He knows that he's lead clubs. He's not going to touch trump so he's going to try to come off suit. Let's say that he's now in 2nd position. What do you think he's going to do? He's going to play an ace. The ace has got to be somewhere. He only took one. I'm going to throw a low card and you're going to throw a counter. So you see the battle that's going back and forth, back and forth. There's this constant battle. Now I'm on lead, I mean my partner's on lead and he decides to cash, because he didn't take 2 aces, he decides to cash another ace for me. I'm the defender. I'm giving him junk."