How to play euchre

• Four players in two teams. Your partner sits across from you.
• A small deck of 24 cards: the 9, 10, jack, queen, king and ace of each suit.
• Each hand, one suit becomes trump, and trumps beat every other suit.
• The team that picks trump needs to win at least 3 of the 5 tricks.
• The first team to 10 points wins the game.

Everyone gets 5 cards, dealt in two passes of 3 and 2. The last 4 cards are the kitty. The top card of the kitty is turned face up: that's the up card.

The deal moves one seat to the left after every hand.

Round 1: the up card

Starting left of the dealer, each player either orders it up (the up card's suit becomes trump) or passes. If someone orders it up, the dealer adds the up card to their hand and puts one card face down, so they still hold 5.

Round 2: name a suit

If all four pass, the up card is turned face down. Going round again, each player may name any other suit as trump, or pass. You can't name the suit that was just turned down.

Whoever chooses trump, their team are the makers. The other team are the defenders.

This is the part that surprises new players. The two jacks of trump's color are the highest cards in the game, and the second one changes suit.

When hearts are trump, the trumps from highest to lowest are:

• The right bower is the jack of trump: the best card in the game.
• The left bower is the other jack of the same color. When hearts are trump, the jack of diamonds is a heart for the whole hand: for following suit, for leading, and for winning.

In the other suits, cards rank the usual way, ace high:

And because the jack of diamonds has become a heart, diamonds are one card short while hearts are trump:

At the Club, a small marker on your left bower reminds you it's a trump.

• The player to the dealer's left plays the first card. This is called leading.
• Everyone else must follow suit (play the same suit) if they can. Remember the left bower counts as trump, not its printed suit.
• If you can't follow suit, you may play any card, including a trump.
• The highest trump wins the trick. If nobody played a trump, the highest card of the suit that was led wins.
• Whoever wins the trick leads the next one. There are 5 tricks in a hand.

At the Club, cards you can't play are dimmed. Tap one and it tells you why, for example “You must follow hearts.”

When you choose trump, you can go alone. Your partner lays down their cards and sits out the hand, and you take on both defenders by yourself. It's risky, but taking all 5 tricks alone is worth 4 points.

If the dealer's partner orders it up and goes alone, the dealer is the one who sits out, so the up card isn't picked up.

Points are added after each hand. The first team to reach 10 wins, and the score can go past it: a march at 9 points finishes the game at 11.

Euchre has many local variations. These are the Club's standard settings:

Stick the dealerOn

If everyone passes twice, the dealer must name trump. Every hand gets played.

Points to win10

The first team to 10 points wins. A table can also play to 5, 11 or 15.

Farmer's handOff

A host can turn this on for a private table, and you can for practice games in your settings. A player dealt nothing but 9s and 10s may then throw the hand in on their first turn to bid, and the same dealer deals again.

There's no reneging at the Club: the game only lets you play cards that follow the rules, so nobody can be caught out, and there's no penalty to worry about.

We take this seriously. Nobody should ever wonder whether the cards are stacked.

• Shuffled like a real table. Before every deal the deck is shuffled, cut, shuffled, cut and shuffled again, starting from a fresh deck every hand. The first cut is near the middle; the second splits the deck into rough thirds and stacks them back so no third goes where it was.
• Truly random. Every shuffle uses the same kind of cryptography that protects online banking, so every one of the roughly 620,000 billion billion possible deals can come up, and none is favored, not even slightly.
• Locked in before you see a card. Before each hand, the Club records a fingerprint of the deal. After the hand, it reveals the secret behind it, so the deal can be checked against the fingerprint and shown never to have changed.
• Check it yourself. After any hand, tap the shield button in the table's corner. Your own browser re-creates the whole deal from the revealed secret and checks it against the cards you saw. You can save any hand to your device and check it again later.
• Never adjusted. The deal is never tweaked to help or hurt anyone: no helping new players, no letting the Club bots win, no streaks.
• The Club bots play fair too. A Club bot sees only its own cards, exactly like you.
• The Club deals, not your device. The shuffle happens on our server. Your browser only ever receives your own cards, so nobody can peek at anyone else's.

Trump

The suit that beats every other suit for this hand.

Right bower

The jack of the trump suit. The highest card in the game.

Left bower

The other jack of the same color as trump. Second highest, and it counts as a trump.

Up card

The card turned face up after the deal. Round 1 is about whether its suit becomes trump.

Kitty

The four cards left over after the deal, with the up card on top.

Order it up

In round 1, choosing the up card's suit as trump. The dealer then picks it up.

Assist

What it's called when the dealer's partner orders it up.

Makers

The team that chose trump. They need 3 of the 5 tricks.

Defenders

The other team. They try to stop the makers.

Euchred

When the makers take fewer than 3 tricks. The defenders score 2.

March

Taking all 5 tricks.

Going alone (a loner)

Playing without your partner for a bigger reward.

Stick the dealer

A rule that makes the dealer choose trump if everyone else passes twice.

Renege

Not following suit when you could. At the Club this can't happen: you can only play legal cards.