Euchre is one of the easiest-to-play trick-taking card games. If you haven’t played it before, you should be able to catch on to how it works in a few rounds of play.
However, getting good at Euchre takes a lot more than practice. You will need to study the game, and not everybody has the time to do that.
Here are five pro tips to help you get your Euchre skills to the next level.
5 Things to Know About Euchre to Get to the Next Level
#1 Keep Track of Your Hand
While it sounds easy, this is what separates the novices from the pros in Euchre. You should work to keep track of the relative value of your hand.
Let’s say you have a King of one suit, and you see another player play an Ace of the same suit. This indicates that the Ace is the strongest card of that suit in the game.
Conversely, you may see a player play a low-ranking card that cannot win the hand. Knowing that your King could win the trick is key information in this situation.
#2 Look for Signs of Suit Shortage
This is one of the best ways to get ahead of your opponents. You must pay attention to your opponent’s cards and look for signs that they don’t have cards in a suit.
If a player lays down a card that’s out of the trump suit, it’s a sign that they don’t have any cards in the suit. But it may also indicate that they are low on the suit’s cards and are passing on playing their trump card for an opportunity to take a trick later.
The best way to figure out why an opponent played a card out of the suit is to look at their teammate’s card. If the partner is taking the trick this round, and they play a low card, the opponent likely has a card in the suit and is saving it for another trick.
Of course, this is a tactic that you can also use – lay down a low-ranking card if you see that your partner is taking the trick.
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Note: It’s good to assume that the opponent that calls trump has at least one bower. The chances of this are high, especially if they hand the dealer a high trump card and the dealer isn’t their partner.
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When you play Euchre with a standard deck of 24 cards, there are four cards that are not in play in every trick. You will know one of these cards if it was passed on during bidding.
What’s interesting is that, on average, every player on the table has 1.5 cards of each suit. For this reason, if a suit is played, other players will also likely have a card of that suit. But from the second trick forth, the players may not have a card from the same suit.
This makes laying down an Ace a good way to win a trick, but the 2 from the same suit is unlikely to win you a trick.
#3 Flush Out the Trump Cards (Strategy #1)
If you’re taking the lead and have the right bower, using it is the right way to go. It forces all other players to play their trump cards.
If another player has the left bower, they will be forced to play it, and this way, you win the trick they would otherwise win.
Interestingly, players have two trump cards on average, and if you have more than two, the other players will have fewer of them.
Therefore, if you have more trump cards, you can use them to your advantage and flush out the trumps.
#4 Flush Out the Trump Cards (Strategy #2)
An alternate approach to playing Euchre is to lead with a low trump. This way, other players will play their trump cards and use them up, giving you a chance to win tricks later.
This approach works best when you don’t have the right bower and want to thin out the trump cards from your opponent’s hands. If your partner has the right bower, they could play it and win the trick.
#5 Learn When to Go Alone
Taking all the tricks alone will earn you four points, winning you 40% of the game. However, going alone is not worth the risk if you do not have the right and left bower plus two other trick-winning cards, like an Ace and another trump card.
If you still want to go alone, evaluate whether your other cards are high-ranking enough for you to win tricks. You will have an advantage if you’re the dealer since you will take the trump card and discard your worst card.
Additionally, if your partner bids before you and passes on the bid, you can assume that your partner doesn’t have enough cards in the suit to play confidently.
If you’re sitting to the dealer’s left, you will have control over the first hand and could catch your opponents off guard since they don’t know what card you’ll play. Therefore, you have a better shot at winning the first trick when going alone if you’re sitting to the dealer’s left.
Conclusion
While the tips above can help you improve your game, there’s only one way to get better at Euchre – play Euchre. Spend some time practicing Euchre online game so you understand the game’s ins and outs.
