The LHS News Staff has already done a story about Euchre, done by Michael Aramouni, I’ll copy and paste it:
Euchre is a 4-player team card game that most think is complicated, but is easy once you start playing. For this game, you’ll need cards 9-Ace and all the 5’s. Also, your partner will be diagonal from you and there should be minimal table talk. The dealer constantly changes every round so everyone has to know some sort of shuffle. When you do deal, you’ll hand out cards in a certain order, 2 cards to one player, then 3, 2 again, then 3 to yourself. Then, you’ll give the opposite. 3 to the person who got 2, then 2, then 3, and finally 2 to yourself. Everyone should have 5 total cards and four left from the deck that was dealt. The dealer will set down the 4 extra cards in the center of your playing table and flip over the top card of the 4 revealing it.
The order of the most powerful card can change depending on if someone calls up that flipped over card. Generally in each suit (Clubs, Spades, Hearts, Diamonds), to goes from the normal 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace. But, if the card that was called up was a heart (or any suit), the new order will do 9, 10, Queen, King, Ace, Jack of Diamonds, then the highest is Jack of Hearts. Basically the jacks with the color called turn into the highest/most powerful cards in that round. Also important to note that the Jack of Diamonds is now considered a heart, not a diamond any more.
Now we can get into a basic start. After everything was dealt properly (if you mess up deal you’ll lose it and next person deals) and the card was flipped the next person to the left/clockwise from the dealer will say if they want the dealer to pick it up, or pass. Telling the dealer to pick up whatever card that’s shown will make it that suit. King of Spades makes spades trump/powerful. If you have a really good hand you can go alone which makes it so your partner is out for the round but you’ll get a lot of points if you win all five hands, I wouldn’t recommend a new player to go alone. If everyone passes then the card that was revealed will get flipped back over and we will go around again. Only this time any suit other than what was shown can be called up. If no one has a good hand then you’ll “screw the dealer” and force them to choose a suit. It’s called “screwing the dealer” because if anyone calls a suit and loses the round it’s 2 points to the other team, it’s also called a Euchre. So don’t just be willy-nilly with your calls because you can lose fast.
For playing out a round (after the suit was called) we again will start to the person left of the dealer as always. It’s imperative to follow suit always. So if someone plays a non-trump card, and you have that same suit, you have to play it even if you had a trump that would’ve beaten it.
The goal is to win at least 3 hands to get one point, if you win all 5 hands you’ll get two points. If you go alone and win all 5 you get 4 points, if you win 3/4 while alone it’s only 1 point. As said before, calling it and losing gives the other team 2 points no matter what happens after they get 3 hands. The 5’s I briefly mentioned at the start for the cards you need are just to keep score.
But, in this News Staff class we play a special way. We play with different rules called “house rules”.
The rules are as follows:
If your hand reads 9, 10, 9, 10, Q everyone puts their cards down and it’s automatically 2 pts. We call it quirk.
If your hand has two jacks and two nines everyone puts their cards down and it’s automatically 1 pt. We have no name for this.
The screw the dealer rules are different too. The dealer has two options: pick a suit, or don’t pick a suit and give the other team a free point instead of risking getting euchred.
These new rules have given the game more variety and has made playing in class way more fun.
