If you hail from upstate New York, downstate Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and many other Midwest locales, chances are good you’re a Euchre fanatic. This four-person, trick-taking card game—originally called Juckerspiel—was brought over by German immigrants who settled in the Midwest.
Euchre, it turns out, reflects life. The game is played with 24 cards, 9 through ace. Like bridge, one suit becomes trump and defeats all other cards (no election jokes, please). The jack of the trump suit is called the right bower (Bauer is “farmer” in German) and is the highest card. The other jack of the same color is called the left bower and is the second-highest card. Then it proceeds from the ace on down.
The dealer is supposed to shuffle the deck only twice before dealing five cards to each player, in sets of twos and threes. This is to maximize good hands, making the game move faster. The dealer turns one card up and keeps the last three facedown, or “buried.” Players go around clockwise from the dealer and say whether they think they and their partner can win three hands, or “tricks.” If so, the dealer is told to pick up the card, whose suit becomes trump, and has to discard another. If it goes all the way around and the dealer turns down the card, bidding goes around again, and players in turn can pick any suit as trump. There are lots of local variations, with allegedly ancient rules. You can learn in five minutes, but it takes years to master.
As cards are played, you must follow suit, unless you can’t. Then you can play a trump card. Highest card wins. Win three tricks for a point. Win all five for 2 points. If you call trump and fail to win three tricks, the other team gets 2 points and will loudly yell “Euchre!” With a really strong hand, you can tell your partner “I’m going alone” and win 4 points if you get all five tricks—a “Lone Bone.” First team to 10 points wins.
As in life, the rules are pretty simple and mindless, but decent strategy gets you ahead.
In Euchre, there are many unknowns. That’s true of many card games. In poker you learn about others through their body language, their tells. In blackjack, you assume every other card is a 10. But in euchre, because there are only 24 cards, you have to figure out what’s going on by seeing a quarter of the cards. Every time a card is played, you learn more. In cards and in…
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