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The Midwest's favourite trick game. The jack of trumps rules, and its same-colour twin changes suit the moment trump is named.
Twenty-four cards — nine through ace in each suit — dealt five to each of four players. You sit at the bottom and the player across the table is your partner. The first side to ten points wins the game.
The ranking is the reason people play this game. Once a trump suit is named, the jack of that suit becomes the highest card in the pack, and the other jack of the same colour becomes the second highest — and that second jack stops belonging to its printed suit entirely. It counts as trump for following suit as well, so if spades are trump and clubs are led, your jack of clubs cannot be played on that trick at all. Below the two jacks, trumps run ace, king, queen, ten, nine, and so does every other suit.
One card is turned face up after the deal. Going once around the table, each player may either order that suit up as trump or pass. If all four pass, a second round lets each player name a different suit instead. Whoever names trump commits their side to winning at least three of the five tricks.
Taking three or four tricks scores one point. Taking all five scores two. Failing to take three is called being euchred and hands the other side two points, which is why a marginal call is expensive. You may also declare that you are going alone: your partner sets their hand aside and sits out the deal, and if you then take all five tricks by yourself the hand is worth four points.
Win the whole game to add one to your streak. A single lost game resets it to zero.
Count trumps, not high cards. A hand with three small trumps and a side ace is usually a better call than one with two aces and no trump, because in a five-trick game the side that runs out of trump first loses control. Before you order anything up, ask how many of the five tricks you can actually see yourself winning, and remember that the dealer picking up the turned card gains a trump too.
Be very careful about ordering up when the dealer is an opponent. The card you order is going straight into their hand, so a marginal call there is doing half their work for them. The same hand that is a comfortable call from the dealer's seat is often a pass from the seat to the dealer's left. Measurement backs the general caution up: an AI that dropped its calling threshold far enough to be euchred more than a fifth of the time lost badly to one that stayed selective.
Going alone is worth more than it looks. Four points is nearly half the game, and the hand does not need to be perfect — the right bower, one more high trump and an off-suit ace is often enough because your partner's cards were unlikely to win tricks anyway. Being too shy about it is a common and quiet leak; the strongest configuration tested went alone roughly one hand in eight.
When defending, lead trump early if your partner made a strong call against you. Pulling trump strips the makers of the ruffs they were counting on and turns your side aces into winners. When your own side made trump, the same logic applies in reverse: draw the opponents' trumps out so your smaller cards survive to the last two tricks.