Euchre Variations

Euchre with three players drops the partnerships entirely: every player keeps their own score, which is why the variant is usually called cutthroat. The deal, the turned card, and the two rounds of bidding all work as in the four-handed game. The twist comes after trump is set. Whoever calls trump — the maker — plays alone against the other two players, who team up for that hand only and pool their tricks. The maker still needs three of the five tricks. Making the bid scores one point, and sweeping all five tricks is usually worth three points in this variant since the maker always plays solo. If the temporary defenders hold the maker to two tricks or fewer, each defender scores two points. Cutthroat rewards bolder calling than partnership Euchre. There is no partner to bail you out, but there is also no partner to split the glory with, and the shifting one-versus-two alliances give every hand a different texture.

Bid Euchre replaces the turned card with an auction. The deck is often dealt out completely — with the 24-card pack and four players that means six cards each — and there is no up-card to order. Starting left of the dealer, each player bids the number of tricks their side will try to win, and the highest bidder names trump. Because hands are six cards instead of five, every trick of the hand is contested and bids can run from modest to "shoot the moon" calls for all six. Several beloved regional games are built on this frame: Hasenpfeffer and Pepper are Bid Euchre relatives, and double-deck Bid Euchre uses two packs shuffled together for partnerships that bid on twelve-card hands. If your group enjoys the judgment of Spades bidding but loves the bowers, Bid Euchre is the natural bridge between the two games.

In standard Euchre, when all four players pass twice — once on the turned card and once on naming a suit — the hand is thrown in and the next dealer redeals. Stick the dealer removes that escape: if the second round of bidding comes back around, the dealer must name a trump suit, however weak their hand. Most competitive tables and leagues play this way, for good reason. It eliminates dead hands, so the game keeps moving. It punishes overly timid bidding, because passing a borderline hand may hand the dealer a forced call that backfires on you — or gift the dealer's team a cheap point. And it adds real strategy around the deal: holding the deal under stick-the-dealer rules is a known disadvantage on bad hands, so players track whose deal it is when deciding to pass. If you learn one house rule before joining a serious table, make it this one.

Euchre traveled, and in Britain and Australia it picked up a 25th card: a joker known as the Benny (or Best Bower, or simply the Joker). The Benny is the highest trump in every hand, ranking above the right bower, so the full trump order runs Benny, right bower, left bower, then ace of trumps on down. The extra card changes the bidding maths. No holding is completely safe when one card in the pack beats your right bower, and a hand containing the Benny is a strong candidate for calling trump — or going alone. If the Benny is turned up as the up-card, the usual rule is that the dealer names the trump suit immediately, and the first round of bidding proceeds as if a card of that suit had been turned. British Euchre is commonly played to 11 points rather than 10, often in pubs and leagues in the West Country, while the Australian game keeps similar conventions.

Going alone is standard Euchre — a maker who calls trump may play the hand without their partner, and a lone march scores four points instead of two. The conventions around lone hands, though, vary table to table. Railroading is the best known. When a player goes alone, some tables let the lone player's partner pass them one card — usually their best — sight unseen, with the loner discarding in exchange. A few groups extend this further when the dealer's partner orders up the turn card alone, effectively funneling two extra cards toward the lone hand. Railroading makes four-point hands far more common, so agree on it before the first deal. A rarer convention is defending alone: a single defender may send their partner out and face the lone maker one on one, typically for four points if the defense wins. Most casual tables skip it, but it is a dramatic rule when a defender holds the Benny or both bowers.