Snakey strategies

Euchre QOD: “Please squeeze the peas”

Euchre Haiku:
Two aces in hand
Must get rid of one but which
Choose wrong the squeeze works

Euchre Palaver
“Squeeze Play” – A strategy in which you force your opponent to choose between two equally good cards to throw away. It is an offensive strategy often employed when going alone.

Savvy Strategies
One of the ordering strategies suggested is to go alone anytime you have 4 trump (unless your team score is 8 points). This usually leaves you with a low card in an off-suit that could easily be beat by one of your opponents, thus squelching your loner. Well, a good way to handle this is to employ the squeeze play. It works like this…

Assuming you win the first trick, lead back trump. Then lead trump again, then lead your 4th trump. For the last trick you can lead your low off-suit and hope that the opponents have thrown away the stopping card.

The squeeze comes in to play on the second to last trick. What happens is the opponents have been throwing off their low cards on the early tricks saving their big cards for the end. This is a good defensive strategy that you should follow.

But when you get down to the second to last trick, the opponents have to choose between two equally good cards. Suppose Hearts is trump and they have both the Ace of Spades and the Ace of Clubs at the end. You play a trump and they have to get rid of one of the aces. Which one do they get rid of? This is the squeeze play. It gives you a 50:50 chance of getting them to throw away the wrong ace.

Perhaps an illustrative hand might be in order. That we can do tomorrow. Right now, I’ve got to go play my ukulele.

Euchre on the Web
Hurray!! We passed the 100 visitors mark in less than 2 weeks. Tell your friends so we can push 200 even quicker.

I was thinking of registering for the World Series of Euchre. I’m not sure if $85 and a trip to Lansing, MI is worth it but it would be fun. It’s early but they’ve got 6 teams signed up already. I couldn’t figure out how many they had last year. I’ll send them an email and see if I can get more information.