Stick the Dealer in Euchre: What to Call When You're Stuck

When you're stuck in Euchre, name the suit you hold the most trumps in, counting the left bower. If two suits tie, take the one with the right bower, then the one with the left bower, then the one that keeps your aces out of trump. In 23,032 stuck hands, that rule scored +0.82 points per hand for the dealer's team and was euchred only 12.6% of the time.

Being stuck is rarely the disaster it sounds like. Three players passed twice, so the trumps they didn't want are often in your hand: stuck dealers held three or more trumps in some suit they could name 67.8% of the time. Below is how we measured it, which suit to name, when to go alone, and when the other players should pass to stick the dealer.

What stick the dealer means

Everyone passes on the turned card in round one, and it's turned face down. In round two, each player can name any other suit or pass. Under stick the dealer, if the first three players pass again, the dealer can't: they must name one of the three suits that weren't turned down. Every hand gets played, and nobody can wait for a redeal.

Some groups call the same rule screw the dealer. Plenty of others play without it and simply redeal when all four pass twice, and house rules vary in the details, so agree on them before the first deal. Poozee's Euchre always sticks the dealer, and the rules guide covers the rest of the game.

How we tested

We dealt 10,000,000 hands and had four of Poozee's Medium computer players bid them. We didn't force anyone to pass: we kept the deals where all seven players before the dealer's second turn chose to pass, so the stuck hands are the ones that really happen. That was 23,032 deals, 0.23% of them, or about 1 in 434.

In each stuck deal we played out every suit the dealer could name, once with the partner and once alone, with Medium bidding and playing everything else. Because every choice is played on the same cards, the luck of the deal cancels out. Results are in points per hand for the dealer's team: their points minus the other team's. In the tables, a number marked with * is within the normal ups and downs of the sample (less than two standard errors from zero), so treat it as about even.

How bad is a stuck hand?

Usually not bad at all. Here's the most trumps the stuck dealer held in any suit they could name, and how the hand went when they named that suit:

Only 0.2% of stuck dealers had a single trump at best, and 0.4% held five. Across all three suits they could name, they averaged 1.92 trumps per suit, and 78.0% held a bower for at least one of them.

The rule against naming the turned-down suit almost never hurts. The dealer held no trumps at all in that suit 72.2% of the time, and held more trumps in it than in any suit they could name in only 0.2% of stuck hands. That's no accident: the dealer passed on that suit in round one.

The passes are what make stuck hands strong. When we instead made all seven players pass on 100,000 deals, good hands and all, only 40.0% of dealers had three or more trumps in a suit they could name, and the same rule scored just +0.14 points per hand and was euchred 33.0% of the time. At a real table, other players pass because they're weak, and that weakness is your strength.

Which suit to name when you're stuck

The rule, step by step:

1. Count trumps in each suit you can name. The left bower counts: the jack of clubs is a spade when spades are trump.
2. Name the suit with the most.
3. Tie? Take the suit with the right bower, then the one with the left bower.
4. Still tied? Take the suit that leaves you more off-suit aces. An ace of trump only ranks third; outside trump it's the best card in its suit.
5. Still tied? Take next, the other suit of the turned-down card's color.

Here's how it did against other ways of choosing, on the same 23,032 stuck hands:

The choice matters: the best suit in hindsight scored 2.11 points per hand more than the worst. Calling next is common round-two advice, but naming it every time when stuck did worse than a random suit.

Why each step

We compared pairs of suits in the same stuck hands, naming one and then the other:

• One more trump was worth +0.74 points per hand. It still won (+0.46) when the longer suit had no bower and the shorter one did, and even (+0.19) when the shorter one held the right bower.
• With the same number of trumps, the suit with the right bower scored +0.39 more, and the left bower beat no bower by +0.15.
• Same trumps and bowers: the suit leaving more off-suit aces scored +0.48 more.
• Everything equal: next scored +0.47 more than a suit of the other color. But that's only a tie-breaker: across all suits with the same number of trumps, next did slightly worse (-0.04), so let the bowers and aces decide first.

A stuck hand, worked through

In one of our stuck deals the ace of hearts was turned down, and the dealer held J♣, K♣, 10♦, Q♦ and A♦:

The rule says diamonds: three trumps beat two, even when the two include the right bower. Our Medium player named clubs here: its count of hand strength rates the right bower plus the ace of diamonds on the side above a third trump. One hand proves nothing on its own, but it's the pattern from the comparisons above.

Should you go alone when stuck?

More often than usual. Going alone turns a march into 4 points, and when three players have just passed twice, your partner's help is worth less. Here's the gain from going alone in the suit the rule names, against the same hands played with the partner, next to the strategy guide's numbers for all hands. A "plain" card is anything that isn't a trump or an off-suit ace:

Every row is better when stuck. The rule: go alone when every card is a trump or an off-suit ace, or with one plain card if you hold the right bower. That came up in 23.9% of stuck hands, and it raised the dealer's team from +0.82 to +0.99 points per hand, with euchres almost unchanged (12.7%, against 12.6% always playing with the partner).

Pro tip: With two plain cards, play with your partner even when stuck. Three trumps and two plain cards lost 0.51 points per hand alone.

Should you pass to stick the dealer?

The other three players face a choice too: name a weak suit, or pass and leave the decision to the dealer. For the player right of the dealer, passing sticks the dealer every time. We looked at marginal hands, where no suit you can name holds three trumps, in 600,000 more deals: whenever one of the three players before the dealer had to choose in round two, we played the hand once with them naming each suit and once with them passing. Here's the gain from naming the suit instead of passing, for their team:

"Cross" means a suit of the other color from the turned-down card. What that means at the table:

• Right of the dealer: name next with any two trumps, and a cross suit only with the right bower. With one trump, or two in a cross suit without the right bower, pass and stick the dealer. After that pass, the stuck dealer was euchred 28.5% of the time.
• The dealer's partner: your pass stuck your own partner 16.9% of the time. Don't name next with two trumps, but do name a cross suit with two; any two cross trumps gained points.
• Left of the dealer: your pass led to a stuck dealer only 7.4% of the time, so this is mostly the usual round-two choice: next with two trumps, otherwise pass.

How Poozee's computer handles it

On Poozee's Euchre, Medium's choice when stuck matched the rule in 80.2% of hands. The main difference is next: Medium named it in only 8.5% of stuck hands, against 20.4% for the rule. Part of that is a habit: Medium counts next as weaker for the dealer's team, which pays for the dealer's partner in round two (without it, Medium would name next in 14.0% of stuck hands). Its count of hand strength does the rest, as in the hand above. In the 4,571 hands where the two chose differently, the rule scored +0.18 points per hand more. Medium went alone in 22.6% of stuck hands, a bit less often than the rule.

Hard thinks it through instead: it imagines many deals of the cards it can't see, tries each suit, plays the hand out and keeps the best. The Hint button shows what Hard would do, so when you're stuck you can check your call against it.

Keep playing

• Play Euchre against three computer levels, with stick the dealer on every hand
• Euchre strategy: when to order up from each seat, tested over 20,000 hands
• How to play Euchre, the full rules with worked examples
• Euchre terms, from bowers to loners
• Play Spades, another partnership game with bidding