It does the difficult arithmetic — meld combinations, counters, set penalties — so you can play the hand. Built for a real card table: numbers large enough to read from the other side of it.
Meld keeps score for four-handed partnership pinochle and three-handed cutthroat, from the bid through the meld and the counters to the final hand. Never played before? It teaches you the game as you go. Or prop up the phone and let Vision Scoring read the table for you. It also keeps a record of how you play — ninety-five honors and a rank beside your name.
Get it on Google PlayOne person keeps the score. Everyone else types in a four-digit code and watches the same board update as the hand goes along. No accounts, no sign-ups.
Players can enter their own meld from their seat, which saves the scorekeeper calling around the table asking what everyone has.
Every table has its stories: the hand somebody bid four hundred on and made, the night you came back from five hundred down, the double run nobody believed. Meld keeps them. Ninety-five honors, awarded quietly as they happen and shown at the end of the game.
Win enough of them and your rank goes up. You start as a nine and work your way through the deck to the ace.
The rest sit in the honors case, arranged in seven sets: Milestones, Feats, The Meld Case, Regulars, At the Table, The Gallery and The Circle. The ones you have not won yet are listed too, with what it takes to win them.
Stand your phone against the sugar bowl where it can see the table. Vision Scoring reads the cards as they are laid down. It adds up everyone’s meld, counts the tricks as they are taken, and does the arithmetic for the whole game.
Nobody reads out their meld. Nobody tallies counters between hands. You play, and the score is already right.
You can step in whenever you like. Every number stays editable, and if the light is poor or a card is covered, Meld says so rather than guessing.
Nothing the camera sees is stored or sent anywhere. The reading happens on your phone. The privacy policy sets that out in full.
Includes everything in the premium purchase: full game history, statistics and honors.
Cancel any time. Your history stays on your phone either way.
We know. We do not like subscriptions either, and we said Meld would not have one. Everything Meld did until now runs on your phone and costs us nothing to keep running, which is why it is a single purchase and will stay that way.
Vision Scoring is different. Reading a card table costs real money every month — the model behind it, and the work of keeping it accurate as it meets new decks, new tables and new lighting. A one-time payment cannot cover a bill that arrives every month, and we would rather charge honestly for it than quietly cut corners.
So it is on its own. Scoring by hand stays free, the premium purchase stays a purchase, and the subscription only exists for the one feature with a monthly cost behind it. If you never want it, nothing about Meld changes.
Free forever, with no adverts. Keep score for as many games as you like without paying anything.
Not a subscription, and never will be. It unlocks your full game history, the statistics — who wins, who bids high, how the last two years have gone — and the honors case.
$1.99 a month or $19.99 a year, and it includes the premium features above. The one part of Meld that costs us money every month. Why it works this way.
These are the values Meld starts with, on a single 48-card deck. Every one of them is editable in the app, so a table that has always scored a double pinochle at 400 can carry on doing exactly that.
Yes. Four-handed partnership pinochle and three-handed cutthroat, including the kitty and the three cards the winning bidder buries.
A run already contains one, so a single marriage does not score twice. A double marriage, king-king-queen-queen of trump, does score in full beside a single run. The app applies the rule so the table does not have to.
Aces, tens and kings are ten each, twenty-four in the deck, plus ten for the last trick. Enter the cards, not the points; the app does the multiplying and shows how many counters are still out.
It loses its meld for the hand, however large. Even a double run needs one counter to survive. Meld applies that and says so before the score is written down.
Yes. The game total, the minimum bid and every meld value can be set to match your house rules, separately for partnership and cutthroat.
No. Scoring works entirely on your own phone. A connection is only needed when you want the rest of the table to follow along on theirs.
Prop your phone up where it can see the table and it reads the cards as they are played: everyone’s meld added up, the tricks counted as they are taken, the whole game scored without anyone reading numbers out. All of the reading happens on your phone, and nothing the camera sees is stored or sent anywhere. See Vision Scoring.
Because it costs us money every month to run, which nothing else in Meld does. Reading a card table depends on a model we pay for and keep accurate as it meets new decks, tables and lighting. A one-time payment cannot cover a recurring bill. Scoring by hand stays free, the premium purchase stays a purchase, and the subscription is $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year with the premium features included.
Yes. If you have never played, the app walks you through a hand as you go: what you are bidding for, which combinations count as meld and what they are worth, why a set hurts. You learn by playing rather than by reading a rulebook first. Once it stops being useful, turn the guidance off in settings.
Not yet. Meld is on Google Play now, and an iPhone version is coming soon. Until then, an iPhone player at the table can still follow along with a four-digit code.
Scoring is free forever, with no adverts, and always will be. An optional one-time purchase — a purchase, not a subscription — unlocks the full game history, the statistics and Honors. Vision Scoring is the one part of Meld that is a subscription, at $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year with the premium features included, because it is the one part that costs money every month to run.
Ninety-five awards for things that happen at a real table, from your first game to setting a team that bid four hundred. Win them and your rank goes up, and the rank sits beside your name on the scoreboard. See Honors above.