History of the game of euchre

However, from Europe to North America, the game continues to enthrall players at home, and some taverns love to offer up a tournament now and again. Great Britain — specifically the Cornwall region — is home to the most avid Euchre players.

Here in Canada, the largest volume of Euchre fans are found in Ontario, as well as Nova Scotia, with a sprinkling of fans throughout the Midwest. Euchre is one of the worlds oldest card games, dating back to the 18 th century.

Alstasia was known as a sanctuary back then; a place where criminals gathered to escape the reach of the law. Presumably, British rogues wiled away the hours playing Juckerspiel ; the name by which it was known prior to Euchre. A trick-catching card game, Euchre is ancestrally derived from an even older game by the name of Ombre. That version — one of the oldest European card games known to man — originated in Spain as a 3-player game in the late 16 th century.

It swept Europe in the 17 th century, taking on new names along the way. The term Bower identifies the highest ranking cards in a hand of Euchre. The former title shows its origin to lie with the 16th-century Spanish game of Hombre English and French Ombre.

Anyone who undertook to win three tricks thereby became "the Man" or lone bidder. A round game is one playable by any number of players, each for himself and without partnerships. Several varieties of five-trick round games are recorded from the 17th century onwards, forming a widespread but loose-knit group of European gambling and drinking games.

More aberrant are Swedish Femkort , "Five-Cards", where there is no trump and the aim is simply to win the last trick, and the German Mauscheln Danish Mausel , a four-hand, four-card game with trump turn-up where, if no one will bid two tricks, the eldest must win at least two and the others at least one each.

Some of these games exhibit features that may have had some bearing on the development of Euchre. Loo or Lanterloo French Lanterlu, "a cooing refrain used in lullabies", Dutch Lanterluy, Labate comes with optional extras, of which the three most significant are. In France, the game is also called Pamphile , and the eponymous Jack is not only the top trump but also serves as a wild card to convert a four-card into a five-card flush, or "mouche" a later name for much the same game.

Cotton describes a form of Loo with flushes but without Pam - perhaps by oversight, as the Oxford English Dictionary quotes a reference to "Pam at Lanterloo".

Chatto Facts and Speculations , p. Euchre is by definition a game of promoted Jacks - indeed, as far as the English-speaking world is concerned, the game of promoted Jacks. Similarly, the 17th-century game of Loo elevates J to highest position and names it Pam. A more accurate, and fascinating, survey of the historical development must take into account the peculiar role of the Jack as a trickster figure - part knave, part fool - popping up in a wide variety of card games, often bearing a personal name which is sometimes also the name of the game.

For example:. Although the spare card originally bore a variety of devices, there can be no doubt from surviving packs that it was associated with Euchre from the first.

Although she does not state whether these were or card packs, the card is elsewhere confirmed as belonging to the short Euchre pack. Western manufacturers generally began to incorporate a spare card in the s, still under a variety of names and designs, and it was presumably only when they were customary in full-length packs that Poker-players started using them as wild cards.

It was not until the end of the century that the depiction of Joker as a kind of court jester became widespread. A later variety of Labet, known as Kontraspiel and first recorded in so presumably decades older , is distinguished by the specific promotion of the Unters of acorns and leaves as permanent top trumps.

It would be interesting to know whether this feature represents an expansion of the J top trump in Pamphile, or an equivalent of the spadille and basto Aces of clubs and swords in Ombre, or of the similarly equivalent Obers Queens of German Solo, itself an 18th-century derivative of Quadrille , which in turn was a four-player expansion of Ombre.

In this connection it may be worth digressing into other German developments of high-powered Jacks, most notably Skat. The ludeme of a suit hierarchy for bidding purposes first appears in the 18th century and is particularly associated with Boston Whist. It may, however, have originated in the game of Preference , since this is what the name of the game implies, and naming a game after its most innovative characteristic is a primary ground rule of ludic nomenclature.

On the not unlikely assumption that clubs and acorns have always been regarded as equivalent, we might imagine a line of development that goes:. What spoils this theory is the fact that the four top Jacks of Skat represents not a doubling of the two-Jack situation but a halving of the situation in its immediate ancestor Schafkopf , in which the four Obers or Queens were promoted, in the same suit order, to a higher position than the Unters or Jacks.

He says euchre originated from the Alsatian game Jucker. An early version played in England and France during the mids was called "ruff," a term still used by Bridge and Spades players to mean the act of trumping when void in the suit led. Euchre was modernized and brought to America during the Napoleonic era, although controversy persists as to how and with whom it arrived. Renowned bridge theorist Charles Goren and the great bridge writer George Coffin both claimed that the game was popularized by the Pennsylvania Dutch.

One piece of evidence supporting this theory is that the euchre term "bower" sounds the same as the German word Bauer, meaning "farmer" as well as "pawn" in chess, incidentally. However, both Hargreave and John Scarne, the noted poker expert and author of The Encyclopedia of Card Games, are of the opinion that euchre was introduced by the French in Louisiana, and later traveled up the Mississippi River to the northern states.

Around , jokers were first added to playing-card decks in the U. Today, a joker is no longer used in the form of euchre practiced by most U. A little over years ago, when the popularity of whist was fading and poker was somewhat limited to riverboats and the Old West, euchre was the most popular card game in the United States.

A few decades later, it was eclipsed by bridge. The United States Playing Card Company tried to sustain the game by using specially prepared decks of cards and by creating games with rules based on those of euchre. However, the bridge craze could not be contained. During the s and '40s, contract bridge was all the rage. Other games, meanwhile, also began to gain fans at euchre's expense.

These included Spades Canasta a huge craze from to and Bid whist. Nonetheless, euchre retained a core following: the Midwest, Pennsylvania, Florida retirees and much of Ontario, Canada. These regions are still bastions for tournaments and clubs, and this game is also popular in the U.

Recently, the Internet has helped to rekindle interest in euchre, and several websites - many of which offer tournaments, ratings and competitive play for enthusiasts of all skill levels. Today, euchre still has legions of devotees around the country and thousands of recent converts. Basic Rules Euchre is normally played in a partnership format with two teams of two players each. Partners sit across from each other. Three-handed and six-handed variations exist as well, but are less popular. The deck consists of 24 cards - the nine through the ace in each of four suits.

A card deck, which was standard a few decades ago, is still used in some locales. The dealer of the first hand is chosen by dealing out the cards until someone receives a jack. That person becomes dealer, shuffles the cards, and offers the deck to the player on his right to cut. Five cards are then dealt to each player in a clockwise direction in batches of two and three cards at a time. Either the set of two or three cards may be dealt first; alternatively, players may agree to deal one card at a time.