Euchre Hands - Stop in the name of love

Euchre QOD: “That’s not a hand, it’s a foot.”

Euchre Haiku:
Two jacks in your hand
The rest of the cards are blanks.
You can stop a march

Euchre Palaver
“Euchre” – Not just the name of the card game, it means to prevent your opponents from making. It occurs when your team wins at least 3 tricks after the opponents have ordered up trump. When it happens you get 2 points.

Savvy Strategies
There are some hands in euchre that are useful in certain circumstances and have thus earned their own classification. Today, we look at a classic hand called the stopper hand.

Stopper hand – A stopper hand is one in which you can stop a march in any suit called trump. A pure stopper hand is one which contains one card in every suit and two Jacks of different colors. Under these circumstances you would have a winner in every suit. In two suits you have the top bower. And in the other two suits you have the second highest bower protected. The other key element to a stopper hand is that you have no good 3 trump suit. For example, the following hand…

Jack (Hearts)
Jack (Spade)
Ten (Diamonds)
Nine (Diamonds)
Nine (Clubs)

…is a classic stopper hand. With this hand and correct play, you should be able to win one trick in any suit named trump. Note: If the cards are laid out in an unfortunate manner, it is possible that you don’t win a trick with this hand.

When your hand is too strong, it no longer becomes a stopper hand because it is a bidding hand. For example…

Jack (Hearts)
Jack (Spades)
Ace (Diamonds)
King (Diamonds)
Nine (Clubs)

…is a bidding hand. Here you can make diamonds trump and have a pretty good chance of making your point. And if your opponents happen to order up diamonds, you’ve got a pretty good chance of euchring them, making this become a “euchre hand”. But we’ll save the discussion of this type of hand for tomorrow.

Euchre on the Web
More euchre t-shirt love! Seriously, I’ve got to make a Euchre Universe t-shirt. Actually, you know what would make a cool euchre shirt is the logo used over at Euchre Links. Perhaps Harv could put one together for the euchre faithful.