So you want to win Euchre: tips to win more games

By Tori Hanline

Tori is a senior double majoring in Earth Science and English. She is involved with the Marlin Chronicle. She enjoys literary fiction like Shirley Jackson. Her favorite contemporary author is Zoe Hana Mikuta. She prefers to write fiction but wrote this piece over J-term and was proud of it.

Euchre is a trick-taking game, common around Michigan and Ohio. Knowing how to play is, I’ve been told, a status symbol in some parts. You aren’t here solely because you’re happy to play, though. You’re here because you want to win. You’re in luck. I’ve been playing my whole life, and here is my hard-won advice on how to win more games. 

1. Have someone to play with. The more you play, the more you can win. Euchre is a dying game, and so are cards in general. You don’t remember learning the rules of Euchre, you’ve always known how to play. This is likely why you are so bad at teaching people the rules. One’s family are often the best victims for this step. It will strengthen your family bond but test it first. Your mother comes from a family of card players and taught your dad, who had only known solitaire. Make sure to marry someone who will love cards or who will love you enough to put up with them.

2. Choose your partner wisely. You and your partner are blood brothers and  sisters for the next hour. You will live and die by their decisions. If your mother decides to pair you up with your boyfriend, don’t fall for it. He sucks at Euchre. Try and switch it up, or try and teach him. 

3. Choose your opponents more wisely. Your partner is your compatriot, but your opponents are even more important. They sit next to you for a reason. If they’re your boyfriend, that reason is to look at your cards. If they aren’t, that reason is because they are vital to the game experience. Make sure to pick a good set. You want to win (why you’re here), but winning against people that don’t know how to play isn’t fun. Choose opponents that, when they lose, will look at how to play better, and then ask to shuffle up and play again. If you lose, do the same. 

4. Remember the trump order. 9-10-Q-K-A-LBower-RBower. The left bower, pronounced “bar,” is the off-suit jack of the same color (for instance, if spades are trump, the left bower is the jack of clubs). The right bower is the on-suit jack. This is confusing to new players and occasionally gets veterans as well, but leads to fun moments where someone plays the off-suit ace and one trumps with the jack of the same suit, which is, of course, not the same suit at all as it is trump. Occasionally, your boyfriend will ask why the left bower is the worse one, especially when he loses with it. Ignore him.

5. The variation played in England has a blank card, placed above the other trump. There is some speculation this is the cause of jokers being included in card decks. The best advice is to avoid playing anyone with this variation, as you do not understand it. 

6.  Always play to win.

7. Keep track of your cards. Often, around the house you will find a card deck that is missing all cards 2-8 except for the 4 and 6 of hearts and spades. We call these “Euchre decks.” Having lost the cards that complete them, they are now useless for every other game. If you want to play other games, don’t do this. Despite the expected corollary, no one has ever found a deck with only 2-8, missing the 4 and 6 of spades and hearts. One wonders what happens to these lonely low numbers.

8. Shuffle well. Your mother has read a research paper on the best way to shuffle and says that the best way is the “grandma shuffle,” where one puts all the cards into the middle of the table and mixes them around like in go fish. You do the second-best shuffle, which is using a bridge shuffle. This is faster, but more importantly, you spent a summer learning how to do it and refuse to shuffle in any way that looks less cool. 

9. People romanticize a new deck of cards. This comes from poker. No idea why. A new deck is useless. It needs to be shuffled before you can do anything with it. Cards need to be disorganized before you can do anything with them. As a disorganized person, you like that about them. 

10. Score appropriately. Don’t miss points. This makes you lose. 

11. Every score bar one (namely, a score of one) can be done with a right angle on a 6 and 4. You do this always because your dad said this to you one summer and you spent an hour figuring out every score except five. Your dad and you usually score. You do this out of a desire for control. Why does your dad do it? 

12. To avoid having to score one point at a non-right angle, the best strategy is to score two points in the first round. 

13. Don’t overbid. Your mother and your sibling are aggressive bidders. You and your dad are passive bidders, which is one of the similarities you share as card players. Since not getting your bid is so punishing, make sure to bid on safe hands. You once went over a year without getting set on a call you made. 

14. Play aggressively. A year is too long. Call more hands. 

15. Never show emotion about the game. Your dad and your sibling often emote upon seeing their hands or verbally complain about them. If you want to win, do not do this. Good card players are called sharks. This is because sharks hunt smaller prey. Be the shark. Always smile, or always frown. Don’t show your true emotions when you’re playing cards. A good way to practice for this is to show your true emotions as rarely as possible. 

16. Never play collaborative games. If you want to win, you want someone to lose. Winning without a loser doesn’t mean much. Pit yourself against the human intellect. It’s the only victory that means anything. 

17. If someone tells you cards reflect life (or that anything reflects life), that says more about them than it does about life. Cards are zero-sum, and so people that say they reflect life are often zero-sum people. That’s fine, you’re often one yourself. 

18. If you can take a trick, take it. Nothing is guaranteed. Take tricks when they’re given to you.

19. If a trick is guaranteed, wait. The high trump will always take a trick. Hold onto it if you can. 

20. You can call a loner. Your partner will not play this hand. If you take all five tricks, you get immense rewards. Only call a loner if you’re confident.

21. Or desperate.

22. “Dutchman’s Point” is a hand where you have the three highest trump. It’s a guaranteed point. You can either take it easy and take the free point or play for all the tricks. Always play for all the tricks. 

23. A common variation is “screw the dealer,” where the dealer is forced to call a suit if they are the last player in the second round of bidding. If you do not play this rule, they can elect to throw it in. Your mom, influenced by your kind-hearted grandmother no doubt, does not play this rule, though her sister-in-law loves it. You don’t have a preference, but be sure to take note of which is being played and make sure to take advantage of it where possible. 

24. If you lose, offer to play again. If you win, offer to play again. Start shuffling the deck before they answer. This will subconsciously influence them.