Practice Euchre: order it up, or pass?

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Your five cards and the face-up card

This practice needs JavaScript turned on. The rules of Euchre are on the rules page.

Coach

Your goal in this practice: picture playing this hand again and again, with different cards for the other players each time. Order it up only when your team would win at least 3 of the 5 rounds more than 2 times out of every 3 (67%). Otherwise, pass.

What just happened

After you choose, the result and the reasons for it appear here.

Your progress

Choices made is how many times you pressed Order it up or Pass. Right choices is how many the Coach marked "Right choice". A result of "Too close to say" counts as a choice made, but not as right or wrong, and it does not break your run. Right in a row now, above the cards, is your current run of right choices. Most right in a row is the best that run has been. "This visit" counts from when you opened this page.

Remember my progress on this device

Off by default. Until you tick the box, nothing is saved and the table has only the "This visit" column. When it is on, a column called "All time" appears and adds up all your visits. Your totals are saved in this browser only and never sent anywhere. Pressing Reset progress sets every number to 0. Turning this off deletes what was saved.

About this practice game

Euchre is a card game for four people in two teams. Every deal starts with one big choice, and this page lets you practice it. You see your five cards and one face-up card. You can order it up, which means you make the face-up card's suit the strongest suit for the deal. Or you can pass. The Coach plays your hand out 400 times to show how often ordering it up would work, and why.

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How Euchre works

What you are trying to do

Euchre is a game for 4 players in 2 teams. Partners sit across from each other. Your team wants to be the first to reach 10 points.

Each deal has 5 rounds. In each round, every player plays one card, and the player with the best card wins all four.

Before play starts, one team picks the strongest suit. That team must then win at least 3 of the 5 rounds.

Win 3 or 4 rounds: that team scores 1 point.
Win all 5 rounds: that team scores 2 points.
Win 2 or fewer rounds: the other team scores 2 points instead.

The other team tries to stop them by winning 3 of the 5 rounds themselves.

What happens, step by step

Deal. One player is the dealer: the player who shuffles and deals. Use only 24 cards: the 9, 10, jack, queen, king and ace of each suit. Deal 5 cards to each player. Four cards are left over. Turn the top one face up. This is the face-up card. The other three stay face down and out of play.
Pick the strongest suit. The player to the dealer's left goes first. Each player in turn says "pass" or "order it up". Ordering it up means the face-up card's suit becomes trump for this deal. Trump is the strongest suit: any trump card beats any card of another suit. Even a trump 9 beats an ace of another suit. Passing means you do not want that suit to be trump, so the choice moves to the next player.
- When someone orders it up, the dealer picks up the face-up card. That card is always a trump card, so the dealer gets one more. The dealer then puts one card face down, out of play, and still has 5 cards.
- The team of the player who ordered it up is the team that must win 3 rounds.
- If all four players pass, a real game lets everyone pick a different suit in a second go-around. This practice covers only the first choice.
The two bowers. Once there is a trump suit, two jacks, called bowers, become the strongest cards in the game. The jack of the trump suit is the right bower. It is the highest card of all. The jack of the other suit with the same color is the left bower. It is the second highest. Example: if hearts are trump, the jack of hearts is the right bower, and the jack of diamonds is the left bower. The left bower now counts as a heart, not a diamond.
Play the 5 rounds.
- The player to the dealer's left plays first. Then each player to the left plays one card.
- You must play the same suit as the first card if you have one. If you have none of that suit, you may play any card, including a trump card.
- The highest trump card wins the round. If nobody played a trump card, the highest card of the first suit played wins. A card of any other suit cannot win.
- In the trump suit there are 7 cards, and they go from highest to lowest: right bower, left bower, ace, king, queen, 10, 9.
- In a suit that is not trump, the cards go from highest to lowest: ace, king, queen, jack, 10, 9. The one exception is the suit with the same color as trump. Its jack has become the left bower, so that suit goes: ace, king, queen, 10, 9.
- The winner of a round collects the four cards and plays first in the next round.
Score. After the 5 rounds, count how many each team won. Score points as listed above. The next deal starts, and the player to the left of the dealer becomes the new dealer.

How it ends

Keep playing deals. The game ends when one team reaches 10 points, and that team wins.

In this practice you make the choice from step 2. The Coach then plays the rest of the deal for you 400 times, with different random cards for the other players, to show how often your team wins at least 3 rounds.

Every practice deal puts you in the same seat: just to the left of the dealer, with the dealer on the other team. So you always choose first. In a real game the dealer changes after every deal, so where you sit compared with the dealer changes too.

How to use this page

Look at your five cards and the face-up card. Cards with a gold outline are trump cards if you order it up.
Press Order it up if you think your team would win at least 3 of the 5 rounds more than 2 times out of every 3 (67%), if this hand were played again and again. Press Pass if you think it would not. Hint shows you how to count your cards and what the count means.
Read the result in the Coach box. Then press Next deal for new cards. Before you choose, the same button says Skip this deal, which moves on without counting.

What the Coach's numbers mean

The Coach plays your hand out 400 times. Each time, the other three players get different random cards, and a computer plays all four hands, yours too. Each time, the face-up suit is trump and the dealer picks up the face-up card, as if you had ordered it up. That is true even when you press Pass.
The percentage is how often your team won at least 3 of the 5 rounds, out of those 400 times. Your team means you and your partner together.
The Coach compares that percentage with 67%, which is 2 times out of every 3:
- 72% or more: ordering it up was the right choice.
- 62% to 71%: the Coach says "Too close to say". Either choice is fine, and it does not count as right or wrong.
- 61% or less: passing was the right choice.
Why 67%? When it works (your team wins at least 3 rounds), your team earns 1 point. When it fails (your team wins 2 or fewer), the other team scores 2 points. Say you order it up 3 times, and it works twice. Your team earns 1 + 1 = 2 points, and the other team earns 2 points for the one failure. You break even. To come out ahead, it has to work more than 2 times out of every 3. (To keep the math simple, the Coach counts every success as 1 point, even though winning all 5 rounds really scores 2.) A percentage from 62% to 71% is within 5 percentage points of 67%, so it counts as too close to say.
At the end of each result, the Coach also shows how many of the 5 rounds your own five cards won on average, how many your partner's cards won, and the total for your team. An average is only a guide: the percentage is what counts.

Rule of thumb

Trump means the face-up card's suit. The right bower is the jack of that suit. The left bower is the other jack of the same color, and it counts as trump too.

Count your trump cards first, and include the left bower. With 4 or 5 trump cards, order it up. You then hold most of the 7 trump cards, so few are left to beat yours. We tested this on 240,000 random deals: it was right in 97 of 100 deals and wrong in fewer than 1 of 100.

With 3 or fewer trump cards, add up the strength of your five cards. Strength is a score for your hand. It is not game points:

The right bower: 3
The left bower: 2
The ace of trump: 2
Any other trump card: 1
An ace in another suit: 1
Every other card: 0

Then decide:

A strength of 6 or more: order it up. In the same tests, that was right in 88 of 100 deals and wrong in fewer than 1 of 100. The rest were too close to say.
A strength of 5: almost enough, but pass. Passing was right in 57 of 100 deals, too close to say in 32, and wrong in 11.
A strength of 4 or fewer: pass. Passing was right in more than 99 of 100 deals.

A face-up jack makes ordering it up riskier. That jack would be the right bower, the highest card in the game. If you order it up, the dealer picks it up. The dealer is on the other team, so the other team would get the best card in the game. With a strength of exactly 6 and a face-up jack, ordering it up was right in 71 of 100 deals and wrong in 18 of 100.

Most deals are passes: in the same tests, passing was right in 90 of 100 deals. Passing costs no points right away. The choice just moves to the next player, who is on the other team and may order it up. But if your hand is strong, passing gives up your own chance to score.

Rules in more detail

The left bower is a trump card, not a card of its own suit. If hearts are trump, the jack of diamonds counts as a heart. When someone plays a diamond first, your jack of diamonds does not count as a diamond. If you hold other diamonds, you must play one of them, not the jack. When someone plays a heart first, your jack of diamonds counts as a heart. If it is the only heart you have, you must play it. Because the jack of diamonds now counts as a heart, only five cards are left in the diamond suit: the 9, 10, queen, king and ace.
The dealer's extra card. The dealer picks up the face-up card only when someone orders it up. The face-up card is always a trump card. If the dealer is on the other team, you give them that card, so they get one more trump card.
If all four players pass, the face-up card is turned face down. Each player in turn may pick any other suit as trump, or pass again. If everyone passes again, the usual rule is that the cards are gathered up and the next player deals.
Scoring. The team that picked trump scores 1 point for winning 3 or 4 rounds and 2 points for winning all 5. If it wins 2 or fewer, the other team scores 2 points. Euchre players call that being "euchred". The first team to reach 10 points wins.

Common beginner mistakes

Forgetting the left bower. If hearts are trump, the jack of diamonds counts as a heart. Count it as a trump card.
Trusting aces in other suits. An ace looks like a sure win. But it wins its round only if no other player plays a trump card on it, and a player who has none of that suit can do that. In the rule of thumb, an ace in another suit adds only 1 to your strength.
Ordering it up with 2 or fewer trump cards. Even the right bower alone is not enough. With 0 or 1 trump card, passing was right in more than 99 of 100 deals. With 2 trump cards, passing was right in 89 of 100 deals. A hand with 2 trump cards is worth ordering up only if its strength adds up to 6 or more, for example both bowers and an ace in another suit.
Ordering it up when the face-up card is a jack. That jack is the right bower, the highest card in the game. It is not in your hand, and the dealer is on the other team in this practice, so you would give it to them. With 3 trump cards and a face-up jack, passing was right in 83 of 100 deals. With 4 or 5 trump cards, ordering it up is still usually right.
Ordering it up when it would work only about half the time. Your team earns 1 point when it works (2 if it wins all 5 rounds), but the other team scores 2 when it fails. So it should work more than 2 times out of every 3.

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