Jean jean the green machine

Euchre QOD: “It’s not easy being green”

Euchre Haiku:
Red cards are comely
But when spades are turned over
They start to look green.

Euchre Palaver
“Green” – This is a term used to mean the wrong color. In euchre there are certain conventions that snooty, backwoods players expect you to follow. If you are sitting first chair, you are supposed to call the “next” suit. If you call suit that is not next, you are calling the “wrong” suit and it’s known as going green. For example if Spades is trump, it would be green to call Hearts or Diamonds. Personally, I think it’s a silly term because if everyone played by the standard conventions only the luckiest people would win. Don’t worry about being green even if you do play in Southern Indiana.

Savvy Strategies
There was a discussion going on at the euchre science board (message 7040) about what to order in the second round when you are sitting at the first seat. According to the point system, you would order up anything that gave you the highest number of points. Not so suggests one of the computer literate posters. Conventional wisdom suggests that in the first seat you should automatically order up the “next” suit. In computer simulations, there does indeed seem to be an advantage to ordering next even if you have something like the 9 and 10 of trump. I’m going to have to test this notion on my euchre computer simulator. But until I can verify or disprove it, I’ll buy in to the following ordering conventions (from seat 1 in the second round).

1. Always order up ‘next’ if you have 3 trump in that suit.
2. Always order up ‘next’ if you have 2 trump in that suit. (unless opponents have 8 points and a set would lead to the loss of the game).
3. Order up ‘next’ if you have 1 trump in that suit and it is the right bower.
4. Never order up ‘next’ if you don’t have any of that suit.

If I find it to be different, I’ll let you know.