Links to, and reviews of, computer euchre, from the publishers of The Columbus Book of Euchre ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Hardware ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Euchre as we knew it once was popular on line, on various world wide web sites such as Pogo (form- erly Excite), Yahoo!, Hardwood, Mystic Island and Games.com. ![]() ![]() Once upon a time, you could play euchre (and other card games) on line, with and against other human beings, for free, and without a “download.” The premier sites were Yahoo! and Pogo. No more. Yahoo! began having conflicts with JAVA early in 2014, and it closed its game sites down in March with a promise of a “newer technology platform” to come. Not yet, and we despair of seeing a user-friendly Yahoo! site again. Pogo also is a site of the past. Not only is Pogo unoperational, but also it became so corrupted by “TRAM” that it became nearly useless. “TRAM” is an acronm for “The rest are mine” and will sweep the board, without showing you the rest of the cards when the outcome of the hand has been determined. Yes, we realize that “Chris’s trick” (look it up in the book: The fifth trick when the trick count is already 3 to 1) is meaningless, but a card player wants to know who had the 9 of hearts, or the unplayed left bower, when the hand is over. Players on line have become so addicted to “speed” (you are more likely to get “booted” from a game for playing slow than for cussing out other players) that they adopt the “TRAM” option without thinking. |
![]() Horse on rider (get him off!) ![]() No horse, no rider, no sitting be- tween the markers, no elbows, with a euchredoodledandy! |
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() just like drinking Postum – there was a reason: It was quick to load, and it always played to 10 points with a 24-card deck – the way real people play (England, Australia and Pennsylvania aren't real, are they? Think about it). ![]() were “Stick the dealer” or not and “rated game” or not. ![]() ![]() American euchre before the wonks came along and fried it. ![]() than other players on line (but you would find stone idiots rated “advanced” there, and even players with losing records rated high. | the result
too often amounted to blaming the victim in those Dark Ages of the internet (which were better, now we look back, than the New). ![]() ![]() ![]() and it has a more intelligent way to deal with the quitter: ![]() ning, by your ISP, whatever), a computer or other player would finish in your place; and your rating would change as if you had finished the game yourself ![]() ![]() bots to finish games, but it still penalized the fried if the game was forfeited; and hosts with only moderate intelligence knew how to keep robots and volunteers out of your chair if you left). ![]() ![]() ![]() – people actually play to 11 in England (and Pennsylvania, but not even in Canada). |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() to slow down, however; it’s hard to tell a spade from a club there – particularly on a card presented horizontally – and it does not give you enough time to see what happened at the end of a hand. And the dumbest players on Earth flock there. There are three innovations on Trickster that we have not encountered in real life: (1) “Going under,” (2) “Call for best” and (3) can’t order or call a suit you don’t have. Nos. 1 and 2 are options; No. 3 is a dumb rule that cannot be avoided on Trickster. By “going under,” you can discard the three weakest cards in your hand (if none of them is higher than a 10) and trade for the “stock” (the three cards left under the turn card). This is fun, and occastionally enables you to enhance a losing hand into a winner. (Some versions of this go to queens for low, called “bottom bitches.”) A sister option (which we have not seen on Trickster) allows a second or third or fourth player to trade for the cards thrown away by the first undergoer. “Call for best” enables a player “going alone” to trade his worst card for his partner’s best card. It is required if enabled, and it could result in a lost trick if the partner who called “alone” has a solid hand and his partner has nothing. But usually it results to the loner’s advantage. The third, not allowing you to order or call a suit you don’t have, is the dumbest of the dumb. If you cannot call or order what you don’t have, you may not be able to call “next for my partner,” execute the “Columbus coup” or “order at the bridge.” The worst thing about Trickster, however, is that the robots – one of whom is likely to wind up being your partner – are the stupidest players you have ever seen. They will not call “next for my partner.” They will not lead trump to the partner who called it. They will lead their partners out of trump. And they will trump a low lead from their right when they should know their partner should have the commanding suit card. |
![]() ![]() and you have to pay for it. ![]() our opinion; but you used to be able to get a free trial and decide for yourself (that has not worked for us lately). ![]() ultimate 21st century site, with the dumbest av- atars yet to appear on line (that’s not good), “music” louder and worser than Muzak (that’s not good), options for 15-point games (that’s not good), British rules (that’s not good), and “TRAM” (that’s not good). ![]() (or worst, if you will) is its “foom” feature – an animated graphics function by which you can send kisses, four-leaf clovers, snow balls, lightning, etc., to any other player – and by which, with an easy code with your partner, you can cheat, in ways undreamed of in the olden days of mere IM and chat lines. ![]() wood may be the most “realistic” euchre ex- |
![]() perience on line, with cheaters and idiots. ![]() ![]() option – a feature by which you can examine all tricks played to the last hand, card by card (and annoy the hell out of the other players who are in such a hurry), just as you can at a real card table (Yahoo! ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() others would do well to adopt: ![]() games played, and you can review them – you can watch an actual replay of any game you se- lect (but you cannot do it during the game). |
find your way into a game
on the Zone – as you did on “WON,” which, like Playsite, is history in its entirety (“WON” stood for “World Opponents Network”). ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Nidink is the dumbest of the dumb. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() on line with players with astronomical ratings who don’t know enough to lead trump when their partner has called it; and we have played with players rated “intermediate” and even “beginner” who know a lot more about what they are doing. ![]() to massage and manipulate the ratings without “cheating”; and if you don’t, we’re not going to tell you – it’s bad enough as it is! ![]() player was rated 35,000-plus (that’s thirty-five thousand, not hundred) and his partner was rated -12,000 something (that’s minus twelve thousand and change)! ![]() You can find a fuller description of such a scam in the archives of Natty Bumppo’s eu- chre columns on line, including a report on a player with a 49.2 per cent winning per- centage and a 20-game winning streak but a -192405 rating (that's minus one hundred ninety-two thousand four hundred five)! ![]() ![]() ![]() is, the average of one partnership’s rating is weighed against that of the other’s; and more or fewer rating points are awarded or deducted for each game depending on the rating dif- ferential. ![]() rating points beating a team with an average rating of 2000 than they will beating a team with an average rating of 1600, and they will lose more rating points by losing to a lower-rated team. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() for beating a lower team; that you lose more for losing to “losers” than for losing to “winners”? ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() and the St. Louis Browns started even every April. ![]() ![]() were in first place and the Browns in last place, if the Browns beat the Yanks they would not gain more than a game on them in the standings, ![]() ![]() what’s with Yahoo! and Pogo? ![]() ![]() ![]() Why should you lose more rating points to a good player who has recently changed his name and come back with a low rating? ![]() to the web site? ![]() rating by the good fortune of owning two computers on line at the same time? ![]() rating in some other fashion? ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() – is the opening lead of trump (and, all too often, the right bower) on defense. ![]() the maker get the trump out, and often it strips the leader’s partner of a trump he could have used on another trick (not infrequently an unguarded left bower). ![]() but you see it. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() And, then, there are almost all the players you encounter on the “play” games (not the “compete” games on Trickster.. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Informational sites:![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() colorful site with rules, ![]() commentary) and righteous “rules of thumb” (these people could play in Columbus). ![]() there are other card games: ![]() casino, 500 rummy — we even like to play hearts (Bill Clinton’s favorite card game). ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Pogo games. “Back doors” enable you to enter “full” lounges and to re-enter games from which you have been booted even if the lounge is “full.” While shove-it worked well on Ya- hoo!, however, it has trouble with Pogo. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() with links, strategy, and other information. ![]() features the Ten Commandments of Euchre (“V: ![]() ner’s order” ) ![]() ![]() euchre column (“Ask Harv!” ). ![]() ![]() ![]() of euchre, check out Bram Kivenko’s page on probabilities. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() cyberspace, was a lot of fun: ![]() structions on how to use 2’s and 3’s for mar- kers for a 10-point game! Tim (“Metalhead”) Hefner’s page was another fun site now gone. |
![]() ![]() ![]() Harvey Lapp’s Dark Side – an awesome, graphic and comprehensive discussion of the techniques out there for ripping you off (at the card table. ![]() the telephone and instant messaging; but there are subtler techniques for pumping up one’s rating on line, discussed elsewhere herein). ![]() ![]() ![]() by David Parlett, ![]() Alsatian game of Jucker and earlier European games, was published in 2007 in the Playing Card (the Journal of the International Playing Card Society) and is now on line. ![]() book The Oxford Guide to Card Games, published in 1990, also contains interesting observations on the history of euchre. |
![]() ![]() ![]() site, on almost all card games, not just euchre. But beware of the euchre rules here – they’re English. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() card game site with links to many games inclu- ding euchre, shareware, and euchre on line. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() butions from both mathematicians and the hoi polloi. Anyone was welcome to join and post, and that was the problem. As “good money drives out bad” in e- conomics (Gresham’s law), numbnocks drive out intellectuals in an open forum. You got a lot more drivel than good advice, and there was no weighting of one against the other. It was one of a number of stupid euchre “groups” on Yahoo! (but it's gone now). |
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![]() ![]() ![]() set up and play any euchre hand you wish to imagine, on line (you don’t have to download anything). ![]() practice. ![]() ![]() work well on some versions of Firefox; try Internet Explorer. ![]() 4.78. ![]() ![]() They keep fixing things that aren’t broken.) ![]() ![]() ![]() puter euchre game you can download free. ![]() is lightning fast and intelligently arrayed; you can rename the players and adjust their “risk” levels (i.e., how willing they are to take chan- ces), and it has an “Advice” tickler on wheth- er to order up or call trump. ![]() “program I wrote in my spare time.” ![]() have a lot of spare time. | ![]() and other versions. ![]() ![]() ![]() there, with free shareware downloads usable for a limited time and buyware downloads with updates promised – and they’re cheap enough, at $10 to $15 a pop: ![]() ![]() ![]() has music, and other sound effects. ![]() more razzly-dazzly than the Euchre Dog, and for that reason we don’t like it as much. ![]() it also has risk adjustment and advice tickling, and it keeps the score with markers: ![]() listening, Pogo? ![]() rider. |
![]() ![]() ![]() score with markers, but it uses two fives in- stead of six (horse) and four (rider) – and it mixes colors in each set of markers (oh, well, Rob’s from Michigan!). ![]() about Cool Hand Yuke is that you can pro- gram your partner to play your ![]() ![]() ventions – e.g., to call “next,” always to lead trump to you when you call it, always to pick up a bower when he turns one, never to order a bower into your hand, etc. ![]() not only a vast array of rules options, but also a cast of characters from Humphrey Bogart to Bugs Bunny for players, with their own voices and remarks (which you can turn off, if they annoy). ![]() and deck and implant them in the game. |
![]() ![]() ![]() Strategies, has put up a downloadable simula- tor (with equally annoying sounds, that can be turned off) ![]() ![]() Teacher that serves as a computer game, a practice field, or a robot table that will play thousands of hands or games in a jiffy to show you the results of certain plays. ![]() populated it with pretty good bots, unlike the tinheads you meet on Pogo and Yahoo! ![]() ![]() they’re still robots; and they play with what Fred Benjamin thinks is good euchre sense, not neces- sarily what you or I might think. ![]() take the simulation results with that grain of salt. Benjamin, known on line as Sword_4_hire, has posted also a probability chart of who will win at any given score, which he says he developed |
from 10,000 simulations each of hands played at all 100 possible scores – i.e., from 0 to 0 to 9 to 9 (with this chart, of course, as with the simulator itself, you must take into account that all players are clones of Fred Benjamin). ![]() ![]() ![]() solitaire euchre program that lets you set up con- ventions with your partner and expected behavior of your opponents. ![]() ![]() display is a little tacky; and it requires a 1,024-by- 768-pixel setup in 16 colors, for no good apparent reason. ![]() type computer euchre games, but some early re- viewers have commented that it asks a rather ex- haustive list of questions about how you play, and want others to play, to get started. ![]() viewer mentioned that it “constantly leads trump against loners despite my explicit instructions to the contrary” (maybe that’s been fixed by now; check it out). Tomas Mertens’ Solitaire-Para- |
dise euchre is another site worth checking out. The Euchre Dude offers software for tour- nament organization in which you can enter entry fees and compute payouts as well as enter brac- kets and compute results. You can also design and print custom score cards and charts with Euchre Dude software. CardsTourney.com is another site with software for tournament organization and prin- ted score sheets. There are at least two Yahoo! groups that display tournament pairing charts in their “files” sections: ![]() Excel file for 16-player pairings, and the Co- lumbus Ohio Euchre group has a Microsoft Word document file with pairings for up to 24 players. ![]() ber” of the group to gain access to the file; but joining a Yahoo! group is easy, and it’s free. |
Hardware:![]() ![]() ![]() on line, mainly for scorekeeping; just Google the term. |
![]() ![]() ![]() Todd Martin’s “euchredoodledandy,” a sim- ple pegboard for scoring that does it right (see illustration at top of this page). ![]() euchredoodlebiddy, for scoring three-handed bid euchre. ![]() from Borf Books. |
Ryan's Ruminations on Euchre Robotics: |
Advanced euchre strategies: Read the author’s columns (archives)