Stick the dealer
Somebody has to call it
If the bidding goes round twice with nobody taking it on, the deal has to name a suit anyway — a good hand or not. Most of the hands worth talking about afterwards start here.
All games
Euchre. Order it up.
Euchre. Order it up.
Or pass.
Four hands and a short deck. You and a computer partner against two more, one card turned up on the table, and two jacks that are no longer where you left them.
How it works
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Call it or pass
One card is turned up, and its suit is on offer to the table in turn. Take it and that's trump; let it go all the way round and anybody can name a different suit instead.
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Mind the bowers
The jack of the trump suit is the best card there is, and the other jack of the same colour is next after it. Whatever that second jack was a moment ago, it belongs to trump now.
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Take three
Follow the suit that was led if you hold it; the highest card takes the trick. Whichever side named trump needs three of the five, and taking all five is worth two.
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Play to ten
Fall short of three and the other side takes two points for the euchre, which is the part everybody remembers. First to ten wins, and then there is another one.
The table
The three of them
They only know what they've seen
Every seat plays off its own view: your partner cannot see your hand, and neither can the two across from you. What they do instead is deal out the cards they haven't seen in a way that fits everything they have, solve that hand exactly, and do it again. You'll notice them counting.
House rules
- Your partner
- Sits opposite and plays their own hand. They lead what they lead, and you find out about it at the same time as everyone else.
- The opposition
- Two of them, one on each side of you. They don't confer either, which is the only reason any of this is fair.
- Stick the dealer
- On to start with, and a switch in the settings if you'd rather it weren't. Pass it round twice and the deal has to name something, whatever they are holding.
- Going alone
- Always on. Four points for all five tricks on your own, one for three or four of them.
- How hard they play
- Three settings. Casual plays by feel and makes mistakes; Sharp reads the table and searches ahead; Ruthless is full strength and counts every card. Sharp is where you start.
- Open hands
- A practice mode that turns all four hands face up, for when you want to know why that lead was wrong rather than just be told.
- Which cards you may play
- The legal ones are lit and the rest are greyed out, including the jack that has quietly become a trump. You can still get it wrong; you just can't get it wrong by accident.
- Fast play
- A switch that deals and animates quicker, for when you already know what everybody just did.
- Scoring
- One for making it, two for all five, and two to the other side for a euchre. First to ten takes the game.
- The clock
- There isn't one. Nobody at this table is waiting on you to play a card, and nobody sighs. They take about half a second over theirs, which is manners rather than thinking.
- What it isn't
- No lobby, no ranking, no chat, no account. Close the tab mid-hand and the only person inconvenienced is you.
Get it
Euchre is free and runs in a browser tab. Nothing to install and nothing to sign into.
Three players are already sitting there, one of them is on your side, and none of them is looking at your cards. It is the game you'd get at a kitchen table in Ontario, without the part where somebody has to drive home.
- Genre
- Card game
- Platforms
- Web
- Price
- Free
Play in the browser
App Store — coming soon