Euchre rules

Setup & dealing

Euchre uses a stripped 24-card deck: only the 9, 10, jack, queen, king and ace of each suit. Four players form two partnerships, partners opposite; in our game you (South) partner Ragnar (North) against Anna (West) and Sigríður (East). The deal rotates one seat left each hand.

Each player is dealt 5 cards (20 in all). The 21st card is turned face up on the remaining stack — this is the upcard, the centre of the first bidding round — and the last three cards stay face down as the kitty, out of play. The player to the dealer's left acts first in the bidding and leads the first trick.

The bowers: how trump really ranks

Once trump is named, the two black-magic cards of Euchre take over. The jack of the trump suit is the right bower, the highest card in the game. The jack of the other suit of the same colour is the left bower, the second-highest — and it becomes a member of the trump suit for every purpose. If hearts are trump, the jack of diamonds is a heart: it follows heart leads, it cannot be played as a diamond while hearts are led, and leading it leads hearts.

Non-trump suits keep the normal order A, K, Q, J, 10, 9 — except the suit that lost its jack to left-bower duty, which is one card short. Any trump beats any non-trump; among non-trumps only the led suit can win a trick.

Bidding: two rounds, stick the dealer

Round 1 — the upcard. Starting left of the dealer, each player in turn may order it up (making the upcard's suit trump) or pass. If anyone orders it up, the dealer adds the upcard to their hand and discards one card face down into the kitty, and play begins. The player who ordered up — from either team — becomes the maker, and their team is on the hook for three tricks.

Round 2 — name your own. If all four players pass, the upcard is turned down. Going around again from the dealer's left, each player may name any suit except the turned-down suit as trump, or pass. Here we play stick the dealer: if the first three players pass in round 2, the dealer must name a suit — passing out the hand is not allowed, so every deal produces a contract.

Going alone. Whoever names trump (in either round) may declare they are playing alone. Their partner puts their hand away and sits the hand out entirely, and the tricks are contested three-handed. A successful lone march pays double the normal march (see the scoring table) — the biggest single swing in the game. Only the maker can go alone; defenders always play as a pair.

Trick play

The player left of the dealer leads the first trick (if that player is the sitting-out partner of a lone maker, the lead moves one further seat left). You must follow the suit led if you can — with "suit" always meaning the effective suit: the left bower is a trump, never a card of its printed suit. When void, you may play anything, trump included. There is no breaking rule: trump may be led at any time, including the first trick.

A trick is won by the highest trump in it (remembering the bower order), or by the highest card of the led suit if no trump appeared. The winner leads next. Five tricks and the hand is scored.

A worked trick, hearts trump: West leads the A♠, your partner ruffs with the 9♥, East overtrumps with the J♦ — the left bower, a heart here — and you, void in spades with only the J♥ in trump, take the whole pile with the right bower. Four "winners" in one trick, settled purely by the bower order. Note East's J♦ could never have been used to follow a diamond lead this hand: it stopped being a diamond the moment hearts were named.

Scoring

All scoring hangs on the maker's team — the side that named trump. They need three tricks; five is a march; fewer than three is a euchre, and the defenders collect instead:

Note the alone asymmetry: going alone only improves the payout for a clean sweep. Three or four tricks alone still score just 1, and getting euchred alone still hands the defenders their usual 2 — the lone call risks nothing extra but gains only on the march.

Winning the game

Hands are played, deal rotating, until one team reaches 10 points at the end of a hand. Exactly one team scores in every hand (the makers or, on a euchre, the defenders — never both), so the two teams can never cross 10 simultaneously and every game has a clean winner.

The scores shape the bidding. At 9 points a single quiet point wins the game, so thin calls are right; at 6-to-9 down, a lone hand's 4 points is often the only realistic road back.

Edge cases & fine print

• The left bower follows trump, not its printed suit. With hearts trump, a diamond lead does NOT oblige the J♦'s holder to play it — it is a heart. Conversely, on a heart lead the J♦ is a legal (and mandatory-suit) follow.
• Ordering up helps the dealer's team too: the dealer exchanges the upcard for their worst card even when an opponent ordered it up. Ordering up gives the dealer a free card — price it into the call.
• The dealer cannot pass in round 2. Stick the dealer means no thrown-in deals; with three passes the dealer must pick a suit (any but the turned-down one).
• The turned-down suit is dead for the whole second round — no player may name it.
• Going alone with the dealer sitting out: if the maker's partner is the dealer on an order-up, the dealer still takes the upcard and the discard happens automatically before the hand is set aside.
• Tricks are three-card in lone hands — the sitting-out partner contributes nothing, and the lead skips them.
• Defenders can never go alone in this version — only the player who names trump chooses.
• The kitty stays secret. The two undealt cards (plus the dealer's discard) are never revealed, so up to three trumps can be invisibly out of play.

Variants

We play the standard North American ruleset exactly as cardgames.io does: 24 cards, two-round bidding with stick-the-dealer, lone hands at 4 points for a march, game to 10. Variants you might know from home tables that are not used here:

• Farmer's hand / no-ace-no-face redeal — trading in a hopeless hand. No redeals here; stick the dealer guarantees a contract instead.
• Defending alone — some rules let a defender also go alone for a 4-point euchre. Defenders here always play as a pair.
• Canadian loner rule — forcing a dealer's partner who orders up to play alone. Ordering up your partner here is a normal team call.
• 32-card (with 7s and 8s) or joker ("Benny") decks — the deck is always 24 cards with no joker.
• Games to 5, 7 or 15 — the target is always 10 points.

Frequently asked questions

Related rulebooks

• Spades rules — bid your tricks — team up against the ai
• Whist rules — classic tricks, rotating trump, first to 7
• Hearts rules — avoid hearts and the queen of spades
• Oh Hell! rules — bid your tricks exactly — no more, no less