Euchre is a simple, yet very fast and fun game. In my travels, I have never met anyone who has not spent significant time in Michigan that knows how to play. It is a very big game in MI; it is not uncommon to hear of churchs holding tournaments of Euchre as fund-raisers. Typcially, such events are difficult to join due to there popularity.
Tournaments of euchre play much like a standard game with the following additional rules:
- Winning or losing a game is irrelevent. Each player records the score of their team, adding it to the score of all previous games. The winner will be the person with the most points after a predefined number of games.
- Players are given a partner at random (or based on the current point leader in a ladder fashion) after each game.
Tournament euchre tends to be much more loner ("go alone") oriented, since players care less about playing it safe then in acquiring points.
One of the nodes above mentions several variations in the game. I've included some comments about some of them below, along with a few others:
- Screw the dealer is a very popular one, because it tends to make the game run faster.
- Partners best is typically frowned upon by most players because it makes "going alone" so much easier.
- Stealing the deal is typically frowned upon as well, but most players I have meant simply treat it as a rule that requires you to pay attention to the game. It is therefore tolerated by most players.
- Farmers hand If a player's hand contains ONLY 9's and 10's, that player may select 3 cards from their hand and exchange them for the three cards under the trump card. The acceptance of this rule varies greatly among players.
- Poker for a point A player may request that this hand's point be given to the player with the best poker hand. This must be called BEFORE the dealer has picked up the face-up trump card. Accepting the call for poker for a point is COMPLETELY voluntary on the part of the other team.