Tips to Play Euchre like a Pro

And Beat the Pants Off Your Opponents!

Euchre is a trick-taking game that originated with the Pennsylvania Dutch in the late nineteenth century. Today, Euchre is a favorite card game that's played in many clubs and organizations on a regular basis. It's a fun and fast-paced game that's not difficult to learn. Euchre is a blend of chance and skill.

Basically, Euchre is played with a regular deck of cards. However, the Euchre deck consists of only twenty-four cards. Because the deuces through the eights have been removed. This leaves the nines, tens, jacks, queens, kings, and aces. A six and a four of any suit can be used as point counters for each team.

This game is played with four people. Each player has a partner who sits in the seat across from them. Each player takes a turn dealing, and the deal is passed clock-wise around the table. Every hand that is dealt consists of five playing cards. The cards are dealt in sets of three then two, or viceversa.

After the hand is dealt, the dealer turns up the next card and places it on top of the remaining four cards in the deck. At this time, each Euchre player should arrange his or her cards by suit. To start out, aces are the highest, then kings, and so on. But, after trump is made, this ranking will change slightly.

The object of Euchre is for each team to take as many tricks as possible during each hand.

To further explain the game of Euchre, let's play a dummy hand:

Let's say the dealer turned up the jack of spades. Player #1 to the dealer's left begins the play.
He/She has no spades in their hand, so they pass. Player #2 is the dealer's partner. If he or she orders up the spade, then their partner (the dealer) will pick the card up, then discard from their hand. But, player #2 has two low spades, and no off-suit aces to help, so they pass too. Player #3 has one spade and two off aces, but they decide to pass also. The dealer has enough spades in their hand to make them think they can take all five tricks. So he or she picks the jack of spades up, discards, and announces they are "playing it alone." This means the dealer's partner sits out this hand.