Euchre

Euchre

A perfect loner hand for spades trump
Origin	Europe, Canada, South Africa
Type	Trick-taking
Players	4
Skills required	Memory, Tactics, Communication
Cards	24-32
Deck	Anglo-American
Play	Clockwise
Card rank (highest to lowest)	J (of trump suit) J (of same color) A K Q 10 9, sometimes 8 7
Playing time	25 min.
Random chance	Medium
Related games
500, Skat

Euchre /ˈjuːkər/ or eucre is a trick-taking card game most commonly played with four people in two partnerships with a deck of 24, 28, or sometimes 32, standard playing cards. It is the game responsible for introducing the joker into modern packs; this was invented around 1860 to act as a top trump or best bower (from the German word Bauer, "farmer", denoting also the jack). It is believed to be closely related to the French game Écarté that was popularized in the United States by the Cornish and Pennsylvania Dutch, and to the seventeenth-century game of bad repute Loo. It may be sometimes referred to as Knock Euchre to distinguish it from Bid Euchre.

Euchre appears to have been introduced into the United States by the early German settlers of Pennsylvania, and from that region gradually to have been disseminated throughout the nation. It has been more recently theorized that the game and its name derives from an eighteenth-century Alsatian card game named Juckerspiel, a derivative of Triomphe. Also, it may have been introduced by immigrants from Cornwall, UK, where it remains a popular game. It is also played in the neighboring county of Devon; one theory is that it was introduced by French or American prisoners of war imprisoned in Dartmoor prison during the early 19th century. Ombre is an ancestral form of Euchre.

In the United States the only teaching of the game, except a few paragraphs in the late American editions of Hoyle's Games, and of Bonn's New Hand-Book of Games, is contained in The Game of Euchre; with its Laws, 32mo., Philadelphia, 1850, pp. 32, attributed to a late learned jurist.