Pinochle is a crazy, mixed-up game — at least to anyone not familiar with it. Not only does the deck contain 48 cards instead of 52, but there are no cards lower than a nine. What’s more, there are two queens of spades, two aces of hearts, and, in fact, every card has a twin –an identical twin, no less.

And, to add to the confusion, the cards rank in order from the ace down to the nine, just as in bridge, but with one exception — the ten is higher than the king!

Now, my friend John, an inveterate pinochle player who never had a kind word to say about bridge — though he understood the game — was at the club one day and there weren’t enough players for a pinochle game. So he consented to play bridge just for kicks.

On the very first deal, he picked up the South hand and got to six spades. John is a pretty good card player and saw right away that he couldn’t make 12 tricks even though he got a club lead and ruffed East’s ace. There simply was no entry to dummy to cash the clubs.

But John thought that if he ran all his trumps, the defenders might blunder and let him make the contract. So he cashed the ace of spades, continued with the ten and was about to play the king when East rudely interrupted and said, “It’s my lead.” You see, John had forgotten he was playing bridge, not pinochle, and that the ten was not second in rank to the ace.

But his inadvertent mistake proved to be just what the doctor ordered. After winning the ten with the jack, East was forced to return a club or lead from one of his kings, so John wound up making the slam.

Nowadays, John doesn’t play much pinochle anymore. You just can’t tear him away from the bridge table!

Tomorrow: Wrong signal.