Listed below are the rules of Euchre. There are many variations possible with this game, so it might not be the version which you are used to playing. As there’s no bidding in this version, it’s a Knock Euchre, not the Bid Etcher.
Euchre is a four player game played by two against two as partners. It is a trick taking game with a trump. Whist is similar to its basic play, i.e., a player starts playing with a card and rest of them follow his suit by playing with one card. The highest rank of the suit wins the trick, unless someone plays the trump suit. The major difference with Whist is the team, which wins several games in that hand, is given name as Trump. The game is played for several rounds until one of them gets 10 points.
Euchre uses a deck of 24 cards which includes 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace of each suit. A few of the variations uses joker, but this version does not use joker. The introductory dealer is chosen randomly, but in the next round the player to the leader’s left is the new dealer, and it goes on. In the first two round of dealing, 5 cards are dealt to each player. Once all the players are ready with their all five cards, the top card of the deck’s face is turned up. Now it’s ready for the next phase of the game, here we go…
The one faced up card’s suit is the potential trump suit on the table. The dealer’s left side player will start, and it goes clockwise. Each player can say “Pass”, means they don't want the suit to become trump, or they can say “Order it up” which means the suit of the card becomes the trump and the calling round ends here. The dealer, who takes the face up card from the table, has to put one of the card from his hand. The team which picks up trump are called “Makers” and the other team becomes “Defender”.
Suppose all the players pass on the trump card, then there’s another round of naming trump. In this round, a player can simply name the suit which he wants as a trump, or he can just say pass. If the first three players pass on this round as well, then the dealer has to take the initiative to name the trump. This is call “Stick Dealer Rule”.
In a few variations of Euchre, the dealer’s partner has to play alone and cannot name the trump too. We haven't used that rule in this version.
The player who order up trumps or names it up can play alone. If a player chooses to play solo, his partner will put down his cards and won’t be playing the rest of the round. Choosing to play alone can help you to score more. More about it in the section below named Scoring. NOTE: in the previous version all the players had the chance to play alone but, in this version, it has been limited to the person who names up or orders up the trump.
The ranking of trump in Euchre is quite different from most of the trump games. The trump suits ranks higher than rest of the suits which is known as Right Bower, the Jack is the highest card among the trump suits. In a twist, the jack with the same color as the trump is the next best trump card. For instance, if the spade are trump then the Jack of clubs would be the next best card, which is known as Left Bower. After that the rest of the cards follows the chronology of being high to low, Ace, king, Queen, 10, 9. The Left Bower is considered as all-purpose member of the trump suit. Just to assure, if trump suit was Hearts, the ranking of trump would be:
Jack of Hearts (Right Bower)
Jack of Diamonds (Left Bower)
Ace of Hearts
King of Hearts
Queen of Hearts
10 of Hearts
9 of Hearts
Playing Euchre is like taking most of the tricks. A player with trump leads the suit, and the rest of the players must follow suit until they have it, if they do not have anything in the lead suit then they can play another suit’s card. Trump beats the lead suit, lead suit beats other suits, cards are ranked from high to low. The person who leads with tricks becomes the lead for the next trick.
As we discussed, the team that picked up trumps are the ‘Makers’ and the other team is ‘Defenders’. A team who wins 3 or more tricks, wins the hand and gets point, the losing team’s score board remains nil. If the player goes alone gets more point for his team. The scoring table is as follows:
|
Result |
Makers |
Defenders |
|
Makers win 3 or 4 tricks. |
1 |
0 |
|
Makers win 5 tricks. |
2 |
0 |
|
Maker goes alone and wins 3 or 4 tricks. |
1 |
0 |
|
Maker goes alone and wins 5 tricks. |
4 |
0 |
|
Defenders win 3 or more tricks. |
0 |
2 |
When a team scores 10 points, they win the game.