The History of Euchre

1. 1810“Eucre” is mentioned in America — the earliest mention of the game there that we know of.
2. 1844The earliest written rules of Euchre that we know of.
3. 1850sThe joker is invented for Euchre, added to the 32-card pack as the “best bower.”
4. Late 1800sEuchre is regarded as the national card game of the United States.
5. TodayIts heartland is the US Midwest and Ontario; it’s also played in Cornwall, Australia and New Zealand.

Alsace is the region on the border between France and Germany, and the game most likely to be Euchre’s ancestor comes from there: Jucker, also called Juckerspiel. Both David Parlett’s history of the game and Wikipedia trace Euchre back to it.

Put the names side by side — Jucker, the early American spelling “Eucre,” and Euchre — and they sit close together. The game’s own vocabulary points the same way, back toward German.

The two strongest cards in standard Euchre are jacks: the right bower, the jack of trump, and the left bower, the other jack of the same color. Bower comes from the German Bauer, meaning “farmer,” which is the German name for the jack. With hearts trump, the bowers are:

So every time someone at a Michigan kitchen table leads the right bower, they’re using a word that came over from German. The joker later added a third: the best bower, which outranks both. The full order is on the card rankings page.

How the game crossed the Atlantic isn’t certain. An early American theory credits the German settlers of Pennsylvania with bringing it over. It’s a theory, not a settled fact, and it’s best repeated as one.

What is documented is the paper trail. “Eucre” is mentioned in America as early as 1810, and the earliest written rules we know of date from 1844 — more than three decades later.

The joker was invented for Euchre. In the 1850s an extra card was added to the pack to serve as the best bower, ranking above even the right bower. The pack it joined had 32 cards, 7s included — the same size the classic two-handed rules of 1863 use — where the standard game today uses 24.

The standard North American game now plays without it, but the joker never left Euchre entirely. British Euchre uses a 25-card pack that includes it and calls it the Benny, and Almonte Euchre, a six-player game from Ontario, uses three. What happens when the joker turns up as the up-card is one of the house rules tables differ on.

By the late 19th century, Euchre was regarded as the national card game of the United States. It left a mark on the language, too: to euchre someone has come to mean to outwit or trick them. At the table the word is precise — the makers are euchred when they take fewer than three tricks, and the defenders score 2. The Euchre glossary has the rest of the game’s vocabulary.

• In Canada, Australia and England, a dealer’s partner who orders up must play alone — the Canadian loner. In the US they can simply assist.
• British Euchre plays with the Benny in a 25-card pack, and to 11 points rather than 10.
• Ontario has Almonte Euchre: six players, three jokers, game to 15.

Sheepshead, the classic Wisconsin card game, has two things in common with Euchre: both are Midwest trick-taking games, and both have German roots. Past that they’re different games — Sheepshead is scored by the points on the cards you capture, while Euchre counts only tricks. Read about the German-American roots of Sheepshead, or see how the two games compare in Sheepshead vs Euchre.

The dates and origins on this page follow these sources. Where they hedge, so do we.

• David Parlett’s history of Euchre
• Wikipedia: Euchre
• Pagat: Euchre