Baiyor & Easley, The Think System

Benjamin, Euchre Strategies

Buchko, Euchre Anyone? Euchre Solitaire

Buzzy, Euchre Explained

“COBER101,” Euchre for Beginners  and
                          Euchre for the Average Player

Martin, Euchre: How to Play and Win

Rigal, Euchre for Dummies

Wergin, Wergin on Euchre

Zalas, Power Euchre

This is an instructive and useful little book.
And it’s one of only two books in print on
euchre that get almost everything right (the
other is The Columbus Book of Euchre).
There are no glaring errors.

There are some highly helpful hints on what
to lead, and an interesting suggestion to lead a
nine to save an ace (pp. 25-27 – the author
may have a point, but he does not explain it).
There’s an interesting section on bid euchre
(both “partner” and “buck”), with good in-
struction.

There are some annoying grammatical
errors, such as “lead” as the past tense of
“lead” going on for several pages beginning

And because the book was printed before
personal computers made “desktop publish-
ing” a household possibility, it’s not the most
attractive book out there: The only color is on
the cover, and the small type makes it a little
hard to read.

But the content of the book makes it well
worth the price (if you can still find it at that).

One of Joe Andrews’ criteria for a “book,”
it seems, is that it must have at least 100 pages.
In correspondence with me in 2001 over the
prospect of collaborating on a euchre book,
he referred to The Columbus Book of Eu-
chre as a “Booklet”;* and in a list of five oth-
er euchre books in his own new book, The
Complete Win at Euchre, he takes care to
point out that only Wergin on Euchre has
more than 100 pages.

And, I must admit, The Columbus Book of
Euchre, listed at 90 pages, does not contain
90 full pages of euchre. Subtracting title pages,

-----------------------------------------------
* Capitalized, yet: “... your Booklet ... my Books ....”

So if I want a competitive euchre “book,” it
seems, I have to get those skinny 75 pages up
to 150 or more. Taking a tip from Joe’s
book, I have found some ways:

– Use big type and lots of inner headlines. If I
cut my average 38 lines a page to Joe’s 30,
I’m up to 95 pages already.

– Use lots of repetition. State the rules twice
(once in “The Basics,” once “Official”). In

– Pad the book with pages having nothing
specifically to do with euchre, such as a
four-page history of the United States
Playing Card Company, a two-page history
of playing cards, and seven pages of “Pro-
files in Courage Euchre” (at a page apiece,
with plenty of white space if there is not a
whole page of nice things to say) about peo-
ple the readers have never heard of who
have not made much of a difference in the
history of euchre (I will grant that three of
Joe’s ten “Profiles in Courage Euchre” might

– Throw in articles by other writers, slap-
dash (Joe wrote less than three-fourths
of the text of his own book. Some out-
side contributions just barely touch on the
subject matter. The inserts include a two-
page history of jacks, by Daphne Tregear,
and five pages on “Euchre Math” written
by Richard Freedman, which, although
somewhat interesting, is of little practical
use). I’m up to 144 pages now (without
counting the history of the United States
Playing Card Company or anything else
twice) – and I’ve passed Wergin.

– Pad the book further with three full pages of
pictures of the four full suits of cards available
in each euchre hand and accounts of 23
“Classic Hands” the author has observed,

Although Joe’s book describes “British Eu-
chre” and nine variants of bid euchre in excru-
ciating detail, there’s not a word on two-han-
ded euchre or euchre solitaire. Let’s face it,
it’s just another thin book on euchre. That
doesn’t mean it’s a bad book. It’s not. Most
of it is correct and helpful. My general criti-
cism is that it’s heavy on example and lean on
principle.

There are too many possible situations to
cover, teaching by example. The “Bidding
Skills – Twenty Questions” in Joe’s book
deal only with whether the dealer should pick

Joe does do well on his examples, although I
find debatable his conclusions on Nos. 8 and
20 of his “Bidding Skills” questions, on Nos. 1,
3 and 8 of his “Opening Leads” quiz, and on
Nos. 3 and 4 of his “Play of the Hand” ex-
amples (try them yourself). I did not review all
the “Classic Hands” – they are presented as
much as profiles in courage excitement as right
or wrong – but I noticed that Joe overlooked a
good potential opening lead on the first one.

– Joe speaks of euchre played in the 18th cen-
tury. There is no evidence that euchre was
played before the 19th century. (Écarté and
Jucker, each believed by various scholars to
be the root of euchre, also date only to the
early 19th century.)

– Joe says that as dealer’s partner you should
order “anytime you have two strong trump
. . . ” (p. 51; my emphasis). I don’t think so.
Good way to queer your partner’s loner.
Trust him, if you have nothing else or have
an answer to other suits. Why do you sup-
pose the Canadians have that silly rule requi-
ring the partner to go alone if he assists?

– Joe says, categorically, to “never call a loner

– Incredibly, he says that if you have 6 or 7
points to your opponents’ 9, “a loner . . . is
a virtual forced call, especially if you hold
junk!’ (emphasis his).”

– There’s a questionable use of the word
“sandbagging.”

– And Joe’s book contains constant reference
to “auction” and “bidding” to make trump.
Aside from the power of jacks, perhaps the

I would like to attribute a few things in Joe’s
book to Natty Bumppo, since Joe didn’t bother:

1. The etymology of the word “joker,” on
page 7, is taken from a hypothesis in David
Parlett’s Oxford Guide to Card Games
extended in The Columbus Book of Eu-

2. And Joe’s special thanks to Harvey Lapp
for his “Ten Commandments of Euchre”
(pp. 43-48) overlooks Lapp’s own ac-
knowledgment, on his Commandments
page, of Natty Bumppo for his special
contributions and editing.

3. Joe heaps acknowledgment on John Mc-
Leod, proprietor of the Card Games web
site, but does not mention McLeod’s
gracious acknowledgment of Natty
Bumppo and The Columbus Book of
Euchre (“the definitive guide to American
euchre,” McLeod calls it) on the Card
Games euchre page; and Joe ignores his
own previous credit to me, in which he
says, “ . . . [S]ome very fine books have

The
Columbus Book of Euchre

You will find the most amazing revelation
in Joe’s book at page 99, in a “Profile in
Courage Euchre” of “Newt’s”: “In Septem-
ber of 2003, the first store in the United
States to offer playing cards and related
merchandise held its grand opening.” What
tricks the memory plays on us! I had thought
that I had been buying playing cards and po-
ker chips at drug stores and dime stores since
the 1940’s.

Joe does take care of his patrons and clients.
We have not only Newt’s, and the history of

One more thing: Let’s just pretend we
never heard of “progressive” tournament
scoring: That’s not euchre.
top

Gallagher’s booklet has a Gorenesque point
system for evaluating a euchre hand. And
while that is its salient feature, its best feature
(aside from the misuse of the words “bid” and
“bidder”; see review of Joe Andrews’ book,
above) is the second little paragraph in the In-
troduction: “Euchre is a bidder’s game. You
must bid at every opportunity. . . . Just to sit
back and pass or hope to euchre your oppo-
nents is a loser’s game. . . .”

Another section, the three “Most Common
Errors by Euchre Players,” is right on: Passing
a makeable hand, failing to lead trump on of-
fense, leading trump on defense. (Trumping a

The point system assigns four points to a
right bower, three to a left, two to each other
trump card, and one to each ace in the off
suits, for a total of 20 “high card” points. Then
the author concludes, and attempts to demon-
strate, that you need 10 points to go alone,
and that you should order or pick up with 7
points (but need only 5 to “assist” – and that’s
a flaw, since it encourages a dealer’s partner,
who normally should keep his mouth shut).

But the math is a little fuzzy. For example,

The author says, at page 3, that a 10-point
hand “cannot be euchred.” Accompanying the
discussion of the point system is a one-page
chart of “biddable” hands from 7 to 13 points.
The chart lists four possible “10-point” hold-
ings, all of which can be euchred, but omits
two – (1) a left with three other trump and an
outside ace, which also can be euchred (by
Right-Ace-x of trumps held by an opponent),

And the author’s assertion that you must
have at least 10 “high card points” to go alone
seems rather timid from one who says you
must bid to win. Natty Bumppo’s Columbus
Book of Euchre, at pp. 42-43, lists four “8-
point” holdings that are excellent candidates
for loners, and even a hand of 2 or 3 points
that will do the trick on a long shot. And Gary
Martin, at p. 20 of his Euchre: How to Play
and Win, shows a “7-point” hand he recom-
mends going alone on.

(1) It fails to distinguish between the value
of a “next” ace and one of the other color. An
ace off color is much more valuable.

(2) It fails to evaluate distribution. The
Goren point system in bridge gives a void the
second highest value, comparable to that of the
left bower in Gallagher’s euchre system. Also
in euchre a singleton ace is worth more than a
doubleton ace; an ace heading a three-card
suit is virtually worthless, and a two-suited
hand has a value not addressed by Gallagher.

(3) It gives no value to kings. While a king
often has no value in euchre, it has tremen-
dous value in a two-suited hand or if its ace is
buried or in partner’s hand.

Another problem with playing by the num-
bers is that each euchre hand is situational –
it’s not only the cards that matter, but also the
position (where you sit at the table, which is
so much more important in a short game like
euchre than in a long game like bridge or
spades), and the score (many things you will
do at 6 or 7, or at 8 or 9, or when your oppo-
nents are at 6 or 7 or at 8 or 9, you will not
do at other scores). You play by Gallagher,
I play by instinct, and I’ll beat you.

I had heard about this book; I wanted to like this book. It’s OK; it’s interesting. But it is too formulaic: It does not capture the intuition, the essence, of euchre.

top

This book might be more appropriately ti-
tled Euchre for Dummies, or, even, Cards
for Dummies, so basic and simplistic it is.
And thin: Of 76 pages, 18 are blank, title or
dedication pages; 4 are full-page illustrations,
and 9 more are nearly full-page illustrations –
all for $8.95. Of the 45 pages remaining, four
are devoted to Old Maid instructions on card
playing: Which is the higher card, a 9 or a
10? a king or an ace? What is a trick? What
is “trump”? What does it mean to “lead”? to
“follow suit”?

It may have been written by a Dummy, so

Inconsistency in use of terms also is dis-
tracting: On page 12, the word “round” is
used as a synonym for a “hand” of five tricks.

“Double suited,” according to this book,
does not mean having only two suits in your
hand, but having two cards in one suit.

Not that the instruction on euchre is all that
clear: An essay on an advantage in being
“double-suited” (i.e., having two cards in a
suit, remember) indicates not that you should
throw one card from an Ace-high off suit to
signal partner, but that you should always
throw off a singleton – even if you have no
trump (which would, worse than failing to sig-
nal partner correctly, give him a false signal).

And we are told that if a player on the team

Then, there is this funny rule that the second hand cannot order without going alone (maybe they really play this way in Canada).

For all that, this book is very attractive typographically – an obvious product of desktop masturbation (yes, I can see the blurb coming: “‘Typographically very attractive’ – Natty Bumppo, author, The Columbus Book of Euchre”).

top

Euchre According to Wergin contains
good basic instruction, and, unlike most
books of Hoyle, recognizes the way most
people play the game. But it is short on wit
and intellect, and it makes a number of errors
and omissions.

The author’s apparent certainty as to the
origins of euchre (“invented in America,” p.
vii) and the term “euchre” (pp. 1-2) is not
shared by scholars. See, e.g., Catherine Per-
ry Hargrave, R. F. Foster, Charles Goren and
the Oxford English Dictionary.

Nor is the author’s passion for “honesty“

In some passages the author contradicts
himself. For example:

– At the top of page 25 he defines “the bridge”
as the dealing team’s being at 6 or 7 points and
the opposing team’s being at 8 or 9. In the
very next paragraph he defines it as a maneu-

– At page 28, the author says, “If you take the
first trick in a suit and your partner discards,
do not lead back the suit he has shown . . . .”
Later on the very same page he says, “Ob-
serve your partner’s discards . . . . In many
cases, that may be your best next lead . . . .”

In other passages, the author is simply
wrong:

– At page 31: “With a score of 9 to 8 in the
dealer’s favor, it is best for the dealer to at-
tempt a hand a shade lighter than normal.”
The opposite is true: Better to let the oppo-

– At page 47, the author states that a dealer’s
turning down a right bower indicates a 62½
per cent probability that the left is in the third
hand and a 37½ per cent probability that it
is in the deck. Actually, the probabilities are
38½ per cent (5/13) in the second hand, 38½
per cent (5/13) in the third, and 23 per cent
(3/13) in the deck. The probabilities are in the
eldest hand’s favor not because of a 62½ per
cent probability his partner holds the left, but
because of a 61½ per cent probability that the
dealer’s partner does not (third hand’s plus

– At page 49, the author suggests that trump-
ing a partner’s ace is “often” OK. While it is
occasionally OK (as it is in bridge and
spades, not just in euchre), this is very bad
advice to a beginner; and beginners may be
the major market for a book of instruction.
Trumping a partner’s ace is one of the two
errors most common to beginners (the other
is reneging with the left bower). The best
advice to beginners is, “Never trump your

– At page 83, the author suggests that players
might wish to play to only 7 points, using 4’s
and 3’s for markers “as the euchre players did
back in the 18th century.” Maybe the 19th
and early 20th centuries (most Hoyle referen-
ces set the game at 5 points, not 7 or 10), but
not the 18th. There is no evidence of the
game earlier than the 19th century.

Further, the author’s legendary super player
“Freddie Fox” would not draw applause from
real euchre players on three of the six hands

The author’s chapter on “Euchre Odds and
Percentages,” seemingly arcane, is but basic
probability theory taught in freshman math.
Although it’s interesting, anyone needing the
chart will get lost in the shuffle.

Many of the author’s suggested “Official
Rules” are likewise superfluous, for example:

– III-1-a, “Riffle the pack at least three times
and follow with several over and under shuf-

– Likewise, III-2, “Pone’s Right to Shuffle”;
IV-1, “Number of Cards to be Cut,” and IV-
3, “Cut Before Dealing,” are rules of Hoyle,
not just euchre.

– Point penalties suggested in IV-3 b and c
for refusing to offer the cut and refusing to cut
are ludicrous. Has the author not heard of the
“Columbus cut”?

– VI-6, requiring the dealer to answer truth-

In sum, the proposed rules are too arcane,
too silly, and too many.

Omissions: Not included in Wergin (but
included in Natty Bumppo’s Columbus Book
of Euchre) are rules and suggestions for eu-
chre solitaire, two-handed euchre with “wid-
ows” or “blinds” for third and fourth hands,
and three-handed buck (bid) euchre. top

I am acquainted with the author through e-mail
and other interaction on line, and I have no partic-
ular reason to suspect him of lying or cheating. He
gives us answer (c): " . . . I win so often in part
because of my partner, . . . with whom I play ap-
proximately 30 per cent of my games. Our play-
ing pattern is simple: Create a table and play with
whomever sits with us." ¹

If you have an established partner, and play most
of your games against players who are not regular
partners, and if you know what you’re doing, and

I would not mention such statistical puffing,
which might seem otherwise irrelevant, except
for one thing: This book is based largely on
statistics and mathematical analysis, with the help
of a computer simulator the author has devised
for the purpose (useable also as an independent
computer game or practice table, and available
on line). So, consider the source; and remember
what Mark Twain (an avid euchre player) said:
“There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies,

When this book was published, a person who has
played the author on line quite a bit exclaimed to me,
“How can he write a book on euchre? He can’t even
play euchre." That does not bother me. Leo Duro-
cher, Casey Stengel and Sparky Anderson all were
better baseball managers than players. What bothers
me is that the author of this book cannot write. How
do you follow someone

* who uses redundancies like “initial opening lead,”
“first lead on next trick,” and “opening lead 2nd
thru 4th tricks”?

* who uses malaprops like “hole card” for the card
turned up, and “kitty” for the stock or talon?

* who misspells “led” throughout the book? ⁴

The language distracts. If you can figure out
what a “finesse” is from the author’s wordy and
convoluted definition and explanation, you under-
stood the concept a lot better to begin with than
he does now.

Look at “kitbitz” [sic] and “kitty” in the defini-
tions section. “Kitbitz” may be a typographical
error instead of a misspelling of “kibitz,” since it
appears out of alphabetical order, where “kibitz”
would be; but it’s wrongly defined in any event.⁵
“Kitty” is defined as the three unseen cards re-
maining in the deck after the deal – “also called
the talon,” the book says. “Talon” is correct (or
you can say “stock,” or “deck,” or “pack”) – but
not “kitty.” A “kitty,” in games, is something of
value (money, usually; cf. poker). It’s the oppo-

Section 9.15 consists entirely of a table pur-
porting to identify “% Probability of opponents
has ‘x’ trump.” I couldn’t get past the syntax:
One opponent’s probability? (“has”) Or both’s?
(“opponents”) (And, what’s the “of ” for, follow-
ed by a verb?) In either event I found suspicious
cells in the table. Just to be sure, I ran it by a ma-
thematician. The table is botched. Not that any-
one needs such a table to begin with: If you don’t
have the answer intuitively, you need to play more.

More confusion is created by diagrams that place
the deal with East in a north-south-east-west layout.
There’s no law against giving East the deal (and East

Then there are the “Duh!” factors: The first
of seven listed occasions on which to lead trump
on defense is, “You only have trump.” (Duh!) The
first of six listed ways to identify a void in another
player’s hand is, “If a player does not follow suit.”
(Duh!)

There is no history, no humor. The only form
of euchre presented or discussed in the book is the
standard American four-player partnership game

The book contains good advice, by and large; but
the presentation is textbookish. “Confused yet?” the
author asks in section 8.1 (of 103 numbered sections
and subsections), on page 60 (of 90). “You should
be,” he answers. Q.E.D. ⁸ The 17-page section 3,
“Opening Bid,” reminds me of Thomas Gallagher’s
point system in Winning at Euchre. If you need
to remember Benjamin’s percentages (not all of them
documented) or Gallagher’s “points,” you’ll be hand-
cuffed trying to play.

Benjamin gives generally good mathematical expla-
nations of how and why certain ploys and maneuvers
work, but his instruction is for the cognoscenti: It’s

And the mathematical analysis is not quite as relia-
ble as it might appear. The botched opponent(’s)(’)(?)
trump probability table was noted above. For another
example, in section 3.6 the author attempts to demon-
strate statistically that “ordering at the bridge” is not
such a good idea. In his test of a “good” hand without
a stopper, he compares the results of 25 simulations of
“donation” against the results of 25 other simulations
of passing. That’s not only not enough simulations for
conclusive results; it’s also simply bad science not to
use the same deals to examine both ways of playing,
with such small samples. He uses the same flawed
dichotomy in a test of a “bad” hand that does not take

For another example: The chart of probabilities of
who will win and who will lose, at certain scores (in
section 8.1), is presented with a stated assumption of
“players . . . equally matched and skilled.” Actually,
it assumes that each player is Fred Benjamin. He’s
the one that gave each player its values. This fact
colors the results of all simulations cited in the entire
book.

And even the assumption that each player is Fred
Benjamin may be overly optimistic. Each player is,
after all, a robot; and others and I have found play by
Benjamin’s robots that reminds us of the tinheads on
Yahoo! and Pogo. Can you imagine basing conclu-
sions of good play on simulations of hands played by

I do think that Benjamin has built a better bot,
and that Yahoo! and Pogo (and the other internet
game sites) should beat a path to his door to seek
to license it from him. But it’s not yet a good e-
nough bot to play with the boys, and the simula-
tions you get from Benjamin’s all-bot tables are
not reliable. ⁹

Some good advice from the book:

* Playing aggressively is required, but playing
recklessly is taking aggression too far. s. 3.2

* Order and call aggressively when you have a
lead of five points or more, to limit your
opponents’ opportunities to call and make
loners that would get them back in the game.

* Lead the king of hearts from jack-10 of clubs,
jack of spades and ace of diamonds when your
left-hand opponent has ordered the 10 of hearts
into his partner’s hand. s. 5.9 Most players would
lead the ace of diamonds or the jack of spades;
and I would have led the ace of diamonds until I
ran simulations (in the Euchre Laboratory, not on
Benjamin’s simulator) supporting the trump lead
on defense here, indicating that a spade lead might
be second best, and suggesting that the diamond
lead might be the worst (the author did not cite
any simulations).

Some not so good:

* Lead away from a guarded left bower when the

* Always open a defense against a loner with an ace
even if you have only one. s. 5.8 This defies an
almost universally accepted prohibition: Do not
lead an ace against a loner if you have only one;
do lead an ace if you have two. The author claims
to have run simulations to prove his point, and ar-
gues that the ace lead is necessary to keep from
getting squeezed on a doubleton. What he has

This book is unlike any other book on euchre.
Although a bit disorganized (you find “what to lead”
all over the place), it is a tour de force, full of pie

But some things cannot be quantified. The author
promises, in section 3.2, to quantify the difference
between aggressive and reckless but admits, in the
analysis of one hand posited for an example, “This
is difficult to estimate.” He winds up advising the
reader, “You must use your own experience.”

¹ Another part of the pattern, not reported by the author but reported to me by one who knows him on line, is that he and his partner do not play again with anyone who beats them. So, “play with whomever sits with us” may be a bit of a stretch, too. (The author meant “whoever sits with us,” of course, not “whomever.” The case of a relative pronoun is dictated by its use in a subordinate clause, if any. The clause, not the pronoun, is the object of the preposition. Lest this observation seem petty, note additional observations of unclear writing following.) [back]

² The author has confided to a mutual acquaintance that he plays mostly, if not exclusively, in the intermediate lounges. But he is skating on thin ice. In a post to the Euchre Science discussion group on Yahoo! a few weeks after publication of his book, he said 75 per cent of Yahoo! players with 65 per cent or better winning records are cheaters. Five of his own “nic” records published in his book show winning percentages ranging from 65.9 to 76 per cent (it’s the 2467 nic with the 65.9%). [back]

³ Twain attributed this remark to Benjamin Disraeli – but a number of scholars believe Twain was lying about that. No one has found any other source for attributing the remark to Disraeli. [back]

⁴ The past tense of “lead” (“lead” pronounced “led” is a heavy metal). [back]

⁵ “ . . . [T]he ability of a person to view more than one hand during the play . . . .” This definition suggests that even a player can kibitz. A kibitzer (it’s a Yiddish word) is a spectator who offers unsolicited advice. And he or she may be allowed to watch only one hand. (We can probably lay some of the blame here on Yahoo!, which also seems not to know what the word means; but even Yahoo! recognizes that kibitzers can see only hands that allow being seen.) [back]

⁶ Cards left over that can be claimed or are otherwise of use are usually called a “dummy” or a “widow,” not a “kitty.” But there is not even a dummy or widow in partnership euchre. [back]

⁷ And the rules section has the deal passing to the right instead of to the left. Thank God for “print on demand”: This can probably be corrected soon, and at not too great a cost. [back]

⁸ Maybe that’s why the author moved section 3 of the book to section 8 in the second printing – so that these remarks would appear two-thirds of the way through the book, instead of on page 12. [back]

⁹ Here’s what a mathematician had to say (my brother, who has a Ph.D. in mathematics and works in mathematics):

“It seems that he produced the table of probabilities of trump holdings in opponents’ hands via simulation and accepted the answers without question. All those numbers could have been computed in closed form using elementary probability theory. Even when you have to get numbers by simulation, you still have to do a mathematical estimation to check them with.

“It appears also that the author hasn’t published any confidence intervals on his simulation data. Any biologist would be able to give you confidence intervals on his rat lab data, but amateurs at simulation don’t seem to see that this is required in simulation as well. Most people think you just run the simulation a few hundred times and then average the results. But to get confidence intervals, so you can have some idea if your data is nonsense or not, you have to collect the runs in batches, collecting variance data from each batch. It’s a sophisticated statistical process.

“Simulation is for mathematically intractable problems to analyze the actual play of the game, as opposed to the deal (which is almost always mathematically tractable). In the play of the game, each play is statistically dependent on the previous play or plays. The number of possibilities grows exponentially with each play, so it becomes unsolvable in closed form. Simulation is then the only recourse. But simulation design then becomes of the utmost importance and is only as good as your robots.

“Exponential error might not be an insurmountable problem on the outcome of the play of a single hand in a game as simple as euchre; but in trying to simulate the probability of winning the game at a given score, with many hands yet to play, he’s being way too ambitious.” [back]

You do get a deck of cards in the deal – and that’s
a mixed blessing. Printed on the face of each card are
instructions on what to do with it. For example, on a
jack:

Trump suit = RIGHT bower:
Lead to draw out other trumps.

Trump color = LEFT bower:
Save until right bower is played.

Non-Trump: Not much help.

That’s good advice as far as it goes, but all expe-
rienced euchre players know that there are times to
lead the left – like, when your partner has made
trump, or you hold left-ace-king.

But what does it mean – to a novice or “dummy”
– to “protect”?

And the hell “don’t lead,” if your partner has
made trump.

The subtitle of Euchre for Dummies is “A Card
Game for the Rest of Us!” What does that tell us?

The author is the co-author (with Omar Sharif) of

Why does he tell us we are playing with a 32-
card deck, when the deck included with the pur-
chase includes only 24 plus sixes and fours of
hearts and clubs for markers (that makes only 28
even if you count the markers – which, we would
like to point out, are of the wrong suits; see “the
Professor’s” explanation).

Why does he instruct us to place the talon and
the turned card in the middle of the table, when
even dummies know to place it to their left, as in
all card games in which the deal rotates, to signify

Why does he say the jack of trump is “often”
referred to as the “right bower” (and the jack of
the same color, other suit, “often” called the “left
bower”)? Has he never played euchre?

And what are these constant references to
“bidding” ? You don’t bid in euchre! You
order, assist, pick up, turn down, pass, or call!

Then there are the actual mistakes. Let’s put
it this way: If this book is the only instruction you
will ever receive on euchre, you will play like a
dummy. top

What Buchko’s Euchre Anyone? Euchre Soli-
taire is, is a workbook. It consists of black and
white photographs of 41 euchre hands, with com-

Each right-hand page, in the 82 pages of photo-
graphs, presents only one of the four hands dealt to
the table in a particular deal (plus the card turned).
You are asked what to do with the hand – whether
to order, pick, pass, or call.

The next page (the overleaf) shows all four hands
in that deal, suggests what you should have done,
recites how the author thinks the hand would have
played out, and gives you or your virtual opponents
a score for what you did, which you write down in a
table (“score sheet”) in the back of the book. If
you move from page to page through the whole book,
you will have “played” enough hands this way for
several full games (the author says “up to four”).

No game score is given in any of the scenarios,
and good euchre players always want to know the
score when confronted with a hand out of the blue.
But if you follow the author’s lead in taking one hand
after another in a simulated “game,” you’ll be keeping
score and know what it is on each hand (and that may
give you an argument with the author on his strategy,
on a hand or two, since he never mentions the score).

The hands and the instruction are basic – the book
is not a collection of riddles or difficult and mysterious
hands. I did not scour the book for mistakes. Most
of the instruction is sound (e.g., “Two terms you hear
all the time in euchre, and should ignore, are ‘never’
and ‘always’”).

But I have a problem with the photographs. I

And aside from the black-and-white presentation,
the photos simply are not very clear. In some of the
photos it’s even a little hard to read the suits of some
of the cards – and not only because the pictures are
blurry and not in color, but also because the cards
are not sorted in the hands depicted in the photos.
It might make sense to show an unsorted hand on
the presentation page, where you are figuring out
what to do with a hand just dealt to you; but it makes

Even blurrier are color photographs of a lone hand in clubs, on the front cover, and of the author, on the back cover. All for $14.82 (with tax and shipping). Caveat emptor.

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The most interesting thing  in  Nick  Buzzy's
Euchre Explained “Kindle" (I am so happy we
do not have to call this a book) is the very first
page:

Wow!  Wish I'd said that in my book!  Then
maybe I wouldn’t have been sued by that numb-
nock in London, Ohio, who called “next” when
the opponents had 8 points and got euchred to
lose a championship game.

Or, what if I were Brian Williams, or the New
York Times?  I’d be off the hook!

This Kindle is a good enough inroduction to
the game although the author’s terminology and
history are a little shaky.  He has the game going
up the Mississippi River instead of downstream,

I disagree that “The game is tough to
learn.”  There are some strange rules,
foreign to other card games; but they
are few and relatively easy to digest.
What is tough is learning to play well.

And you use fives for scoring mark-

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There were some options in the old days that we
no longer recognize – such as “lapping” (carrying
excess points from one game to the next), “jam-
bone” (a super loner laid face up on the table, al-
lowing an opponent to call the play, and scoring
eight points, not four, on a march), and “jamboree”

More striking are the parallels and the similarities.
Calling “next” in first chair was recommended even
then (that was called “Dutching” in the 19th century,
but the term “next” also was in vogue), as were “or-
dering at the bridge,” “donation” (but not so called),
“crossing” (calling a suit of the color opposite of that
turned down, in second chair), “sucking in” (but not
so called – that is, “bagging” a good hand at the deal
to induce your left hand opponent to call “next”),
promoting a face card with a lower lead from the
same suit, playing second hand low and third hand
high, leading trump on offense but not on defense,
and defending alone (for a four-point euchre). Some
of the early writers even recommended – as I do –
calling “next” in first chair with none of it in your hand
on occasion. This is a ploy only recently named the
“full Eddy” (after Edmond Hoyle).

Equally striking, in the ancient literature, is the omis-

The earliest euchre book I have had the privilege
of reading is The Law and Practice of the Game
of Euchre, which says, on the title page, that it is
“by a Professor.” The title on the cover is Euchre
and Its Laws. There is a later edition (1877), with
ten additional pages, titled The Laws [sic; plural,
now] and Practice of the Game of Euchre to
Which is Added the Rules for Playing Draw
Poker.

The “Professor,” we are almost sure, was one
Charles Henry Wharton Meehan, head of the law
library of the Library of Congresss and son of the
Librarian of Congress, John Silva Meehan, who

Charles Meehan died in 1872, five years before
publication of the second edition of the “Professor’s”
book. We are guessing that his publisher or family
or executor merely carried on.

As well they should have. The Professor’s writing
was superb. Here are some samples:

“In playing the game on the Mississippi River, if
the player who plays alone is euchred, the steamer is
stopped at the first landing and the unlucky player is
put ashore. In the State of Arkansas he is carried
out to be hung to the first adjacent tree, without
benefit of clergy.”

“So if your hand . . . should happen to be as red
as the saints’ days in a Romish calendar, or as black
as the concentrated essence of midnight, when the
opposite colors are trumps, pursue the even tenor
of your play, with placid demeanor – with columbine

“It may hap, once in while, that you will find your-
self associated with a partner who is a novice in the
philosophy and mysteries of our noble game; and
when you begin to perceive that he is one of those
unfortunate individuals of neglected erudition, whose
intense ignorance of the play is disheartening – dis-
playing the most marvelous ingenuity in preventing
you from winning, and a cruelly tantalizing facility in
helping your opponents to defeat you – smile, if you
can. We always do. Illuc Ionicus.” That is, don’t
complain about your partner, either!

The “Professor” was fond of quoting from Latin
and French, and Shakespeare and Pope; and that
might throw off a number of today’s readers.

And I take it back: The Columbus Book of

That is not to disparage the “Professor” one whit:
He wrote of the game as it was played in his time,
and he did it well.

The “Professor’s” research satisfied him that the
French had virtually nothing to do with the origin of
euchre, and that it was a German game (although he
was puzzled about the origin of the word “euchre” –
which was not adequately explained until 1990 and
the publication of David Parlett’s Oxford Guide to
Card Games, in which euchre was traced to the
early 19th century game of Jucker in the Germanic
region Alsace). Some of the later euchre writers of
the 19th century, including John Keller and the anon-
ymous author of Euchre: How to Play It, were

Incidentally, the “Professor” explained why
diamonds and spades, not hearts and clubs, are
the suits traditionally selected for “markers” (deu-
ces and trays, in the old days, for a five-point game
– and the “Professor” called them “counters”, not
“markers”): “Because the pips of those two suits,
being more sharp, are easily discerned.”

It is interesting to note also that none of the 19th
century writers of euchre texts ever referred to
Hoyle, except in speaking of whist. Hoyle never
played euchre.

An earlier book – Hoyle’s Games, published in
Philadelphia in 1845 by Henry F. Anners (the au-

Dealing in twos and threes was the way even way
back then, and “ordering at the bridge” was one of
the ploys described. Going alone was called “cards
away,” as it was alternately in the “Professor’s” and
other books of the 19th century; but the principle was
the same as now.

This book copies liberally from the “Professor’s”
book, and maybe that’s why the author’s name is
not revealed. The 29-page chapter “Hints to Tyros”
is lifted virtually verbatim, without a hint of a credit
to the “Professor.” Either it is blatant plagiarism, or
it is a case of the “Professor’s” executors, heirs or
publishers themselves extending their prior publica-
tion to the British Empire.

But the author takes issue with some of the “Pro-
fessor’s” pronouncements: For example, the “Pro-
fessor” had suggested that the opponents should get
four points for euchring a lone hand; and the author
of this book points out the folly of such a proposition.

And this book gives us our first glimpse of stealing
the deal, in its presentation of the rules: “If a deal is
made out of turn, it is good, provided it be not dis-
covered before the dealer has discarded, and the
eldest hand has led.”

This book has a tedious eight-page description of
“progressive” (tournament) euchre; but that is offset
with a delightful little euchre story, about a priggish
parson who is seduced by a comely widow with a
card game. Other features are a 91-entry “Diction-
ary of Technical Terms” (exceeding the “Profes-
sor’s” by a dozen) and a comprehensive index.    top

How much Todd paid for this rare book is confi-
dential, but I think I am at liberty to say that it cost
him more than The Columbus Book of Euchre,
Joseph D. Andrews’ The Complete Win at Eu-
chre and John Ellis’ Euchre: The Grandpa Lou
Way combined.

Joe Andrews would not call Keller’s work a
“book,” I’m afraid: It’s only 82 pages long, with
78 pages of text. Compare that to The Columbus
Book of Euchre with 90 pages (75 of text, also not
a “book”) and Joe’s book with 171 pages (151 of
text). And Keller’s work contains only 28 lines to
the page, compared to 30 in Joe’s and 38 in The
Columbus Book of Euchre. By conversion to
Kellerian for common denomination, we get Kel-

The “Professor’s” 1862 book is less dense yet
typographically, with 24 lines to the page and nar-
rower columns; and the anonymous Euchre: How
to Play It, even less dense, with 22 lines and yet
narrower columns. So reckoning by page numbers
is not a true comparison of relative “thickness.”
Counting text pages only and adjusting for typo-
graphical density, we find the “Professor’s” book
containing only 93 pages on the “Kellerian” scale,
and the anonymous contemporary of Keller’s book,
only 88.

How is it, then, that Keller and Bumppo found
the space to lay out rules for two-handed euchre,
and Joe and others did not? (I received an e-mail
once asking what the rules are for two-handed eu-
chre. I suggested that the writer might like to pur-
chase my book. Then I felt bad. Perhaps he had
spent all his disposable earnings on Joe’s book, and
was disheartened.)

Keller’s book is a little top-heavy in rules: Twenty-
four pages – nearly a third of the book – are devoted
to the basic rules of the game. Four pages are devo-
ted to definitions. Another 34 pages – nearly half the
book – are devoted to rules of variations of the game.
Only nine pages are devoted to strategy (compared to
the “Professor’s” 30 pages of “Hints to Tyros” (most
of them copied in the 29-page chapter of the same title
in the anonymous book).

The remaining seven pages of Keller’s are devoted
to history and sociology. And that’s pretty interesting.
Keller seems to have thought that “the French settlers

Besides, we all know now – thanks to 9/11 and
George W. Bush – that there were no “French set-
tlers” of “America.” We ran them all off to Canada.

Keller does not shy from his proposition, however.
His variations include games called “French euchre”
and “Napoleon,” which he calls “a French variation
of euchre” (so much for the assertion of Keller’s con-
temporary R. F. Foster that “The French know
nothing about euchre in any form” !).

The “French euchre” described by Keller and his

“Napoleon,” better known as “Nap,” has some
similarities to euchre; but it’s a separate game. And
it’s British, not French. David Parlett, in The Ox-
ford Guide to Card Games, notes that Nap was
“widely recorded in European gamebooks as a sim-
plification of Euchre – though ‘an elaboration of
Rams’ would be more like it. . . . ” (rams is yet
another game, possibly of German origin).

Nap, Parlett says, “evidently commemorates Na-
poleon III, who retired to Britain after losing the
Franco-Prussian war in 1870, and has since been
described as ‘the nearest thing Europe ever pro-
duced to a river boat gambler,’ ” quoting another
author, Edmond Taylor.

The Napoleon described by Keller seems to be
more a euchristic variation of Nap than a Napoleonic
variation of euchre. I’m stickin’ with Foster: The
French, like Joe Andrews, know nothing about eu-
chre, in any form.

Have you ever run into a Frenchman playing euchre
on Yahoo? I haven’t. I’ve encountered a lot of Can-
adians, Brits, Aussies and New Zealanders, and even
Italians, Swedes and Poles, but never a Frenchman.
Never even a Quebecois.

There are some intriguing differences between the
basic euchre the 19th century authors describe and
the euchre we know today (besides the 32-card deck
and the five-point game):

For one thing, you could go alone on your partner’s

For another, they reported plays called “jambone”
and “jamboree.” A “jambone” was a strong lone
hand that the holder laid down on the table face up.
His left-hand opponent could dictate the lead or the
loner’s play on the lead. Thus one did not want to
“jambone” with a marginal loner. But if you took
all five tricks with a “jambone,” you got eight points,
not just four.

What could you do with eight points in a five-point
game? Well, that’s where “lapping” came in. You
could “lap” excess points from one game to the next.
(Not everyone played these options; and, obviously,
they fell by the wayside.)

Keller described also a game called “set-back eu-
chre” – which he called the “least popular variation”
– that is very similar to the bid euchre of today in
which everyone begins with 15 points and plays to
zero (in those days they began with 5).

One more thing: The “progressive” euchre de-
scribed by Keller and his anonymous contemporary
was not the same thing as the “8 by 8” formula pro-
moted by Grand Prix Cowboy Joe, in which 64
players play eight rounds of eight hands each, all
players moving on to other tables after eight hands
regardless of whether anyone has reached a score
of ten. In the old version (still played today) there
was a “head table” that dictated length of play by
how long it took that table to finish a game. At the
other tables, the winners were whoever were ahead
when the head table finished (ties were broken by

Since the scoring was by games, and not by points, the original “progressive euchre” actually was a lot like euchre, unlike the “8 by 8 progressive” format of today.

The pseudonymous author makes an argument, in
the one-page preface of the section on euchre, that it
“may be fairly described as an Americanized species
of Écarté; in fact, the name is said to be a corruption
of that French word. According to some accounts it
was first played by the French settlers in Louisiana . . . .”

Later scholarship has disproved such notions. We
now know that euchre in its origin was a German game
carried to America by the Pennsylvania Dutch, from
Alsace, not from the heart of France. “Berkeley’s”
book is probably largely responsible for the mistaken
notion that the French carried the game of euchre to
Pennsylvania up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers from
New Orleans rather than its flowing down the rivers
from Pennsylvania, which was much more likely the
case.

He’s right about that – except for the phraseology,
much of which has German roots: “bower” from
“Bauer,” “march” from “Marsch,” and “euchre”
and “joker” from “Jucker.”

Some of the similarities between écarté and
euchre were, indeed, striking: The 32-card deck
(omitting deuces through sixes), dealing five-card
hands in twos and threes, and making trump by
turning a card rather than by bidding. But a number
of European card games of the period used that 32-
card deck: Piquet is one that survives (hardly any-
one plays écarté any more). And écarté was strictly
a two-handed game – and one in which jacks were
not boss.

Much of the two- and three-handed instruction is
valid, in principle, for the four-handed version; but the
ultimate failure of the book, insofar as it might other-
wise be valuable to a student or player of today’s
game, is that it concentrates highly on mathematical probabilities. The book even contains half a dozen
probability tables regarding the values of certain hold-
ings. There’s nothing wrong with that in concept – a
number of players crave arithmetical odds. The prob-

The text is interspersed with numerous graphic ex-
amples of possible five-card holdings, and instruction
as to what to do with them if they should happen to be
dealt to you, with a certain trump turned, and at certain
scores. But almost all that instruction is couched in
those archaic probabilities. Unfortunately what may
have been a valuable book in its own day is now of
largely historical interest only. top

It’s tiny – “pocket-sized,” they say; and it really will
slide into a vest pocket, or even a shirt pocket if you
don’t mind the top sticking out about an inch – 5¼
inches tall by 2¾ inches wide. It contains no history
of the game.

But it’s crammed full of description and rules of
euchre – which means the print is tiny, and a little
hard to read. And scanning it, one might be amazed
how little the game has changed over the last century.
The backings displayed from a Bicycle deck are the
same we know today, and so is the trademark ace of
spades.

“The game is five points,” it is written; but also,
“Or, if agreed upon by the players, ten points.” The
game is said to be played with 32 cards (33 if a jo-
ker is added): But it is mentioned also, “Another

Rules are given for two-handed, three-handed and
four-handed euchre. The three-handed game is not
the “buck” or bid euchre that many of us are familiar
with, but a regular game of euchre in which the maker
always goes alone and the other two players team up
against him (and the maker gets three points for a
march, not two or four).

There is a “five-handed euchre” described, howev-
er, that is a bit like bid or “buck” euchre, with points
off for tricks taken until the winner goes out at zero;
but there is no bidding in it to name trump. Trump is
made by the turn of a card from the stock; and there
is no ordering, assisting, picking up, calling, or argu-
ment. What is turned is trump, and that’s it. This
game is about the same as the “set-back euchre” de-
scribed in the British book of similar title.

There’s “blind euchre,” for three, four or five
people, which involves trading two cards of one’s
hand for a two-card blind dealt to the table. There’s
also “railroad euchre,” found also in the earlier British
book. Railroad euchre was almost always played to
ten points, it was usually played with a joker as “best
bower,” and it usually featured “lapping” – allowing a
winning team to carry excess points over to the next
game. It also allowed a player going alone to call for
his partner’s best card and discard one of his own in
exchange, and allowed an opponent to do the same
with his partner and defend alone for a 4-point
euchre.

The rules set out for the four-handed game in this
book are substantially those we know today (inclu-
ding the rules for going alone, and an allowance of
stealing the deal).

The rules and description of four-handed euchre
comprise 5½ pages, which is a plenty. Two-handed
and three-handed euchre take a page apiece. There's
a four-page chapter on “progressive euchre,” which is
a tournament formula for 12 or more players, and not
the same thing as the “8 by 8 progressive” format found
in some present tournaments (in which 64 players play
eight rounds of eight hands each, all players moving on

All the foregoing takes 20½ pages of this 34-page book, which finishes with 13½ pages of “Hints,” or strategy. The strategy chapter in the British book of similar title was “Hints to Tyros,” and they were nearly verbatim the same as the “Hints to Tyros” in the “Professor’s” 1862 book The Law and Practice of the Game of Euchre. The “Hints” in this book are not the same thing; but they’re pretty standard stuff, including “next” and “ordering at the bridge.” There is no new thing under the euchre sun.

There are no sample hands displayed or discussed in this book.

The “Hints,” although standard, are rigorously presented and excellent, and as good today as they were a hundred years ago. This is as good a compact euchre book as I have seen, and all one would ever need. Too bad it’s out of print.

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Discover Euchre is a very well produced
videotape of very basic instruction on how to
play euchre. It is very colorful, and very clean
(even the players’ fingernails are very clean.
And the players themselves – two young men
and two young women – are pretty, and
clean. There are no crumpled paper cups or
beer stains on the carpet – not even any drinks
or ashtrays on the table). Other than that, not
much to say: A little humor, no esoterica.

There are a couple of mistakes: Jeff should
have gone alone at 18:00 (but Pam should
have picked up so he couldn’t have). And
Mike explains, at 23:00, that the lead is to
the lone hand instead of from the lone hand
(which otherwise would have had the lead)

And Mike tells us that the penalty for re-
neging is a 2-point subtraction from your
score. That’s not even Hoyle; almost every-
where they add the penalty to the other team’s
score. Ah, those northern Hoosiers! Maybe
they’re just too close to Michigan!