Pinochle is derived from several different card game traditions. The oldest of its traditional features are the Ace to 10 hierarchy and marriages. Ace-10 games, in which 10s supercede kings in worth and power, probably were combined with marriage games at some point in the early 18th century. A marriage game refers to any card game that includes point-scoring opportunities arrived at by matching the king and queen of the same suit. Also related to the marriage concept is the joining of the jack of diamonds to the queen of spades (called Pinochle).

The marriage element preceded all other elements. Queens did not exist as card figures until the 15th century in Germany. They first showed up in a game called Poch. Not long after that a French game, Glic, included marriages as a scoring combination. Poch and Glic are also the early ancestors of modern Poker.
Sixty-Six and Binokel, two German games in the Ace-10 category, had by the early 18th century acquired the trick-taking format common to several other games. Shortly thereafter, a game called Mariagen-Spiel, shortened to Mariage, appeared in Germany. Its French name is misleading, a result of the fact that throughout Europe the nobility spoke French rather than their native tongues. Mariage was probably a German creation of the upper class.

From there the story shifts to France. Paris casinos in the 1840s were surprised by the sudden appearance of Bezique, a game that included the Ace-10 feature, marriages, and an interesting scoring phenomenon that paired up jacks and queens. Bezique was played in a double-pack of 64 cards ranking from Ace-7. Games were to 1,000 points.
In Bezique, the queen of spades could be matched to the jack of diamonds for points. These and other features apparently originated in an old French province named Limousin. The spade queen and her erstwhile companion invite considerable speculation. The jack of diamonds is often viewed as a rogue; in some traditional games he is used as a joker or fool. His joining up with the queen may be viewed as the herculean jest of card games.

Another interpretation is that the jack of diamonds represents Hector de Maris, a knight of the round table and half-brother of Lancelot. The jack of clubs is said to represent Lancelot himself. This leads to an easy guess that the two knights' face card identities were switched, and Lancelot's transgression with Queen Guinevere was mistakenly assigned to Hector. The whole matter would be clarified if it were possible to link that mythical lady to the queen of spades. Unfortunately, no such evidence exists.

At any rate, Bezique crossed the Atlantic and appeared in the Modern Pocket Hoyle in 1868. Penuchle, however did not appear in Hoyle until 12 years later. The name and play was actually derived from Binokel (two-eyes), another German card game variation, and a cousin to Bezique. Binokel is played using the familiar 48-card pack (stripped of the 7s and 8s used in Bezique). The word binokel (or pince-nez) is probably another reference to the jack and queen. These two figures, cast in profile on most decks, have only one eye each. When you lay the two cards together, their single eyes combine as two eyes, and thus, binokel.