How to Play Double Bid Euchre Part I: Basic Gameplay

Play­ers:
Four peo­ple in teams of two. Your part­ner should sit across from you.

Mate­ri­als:
A pinochle deck or the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten and Nine in all four suits from two reg­u­lar decks of cards. This means each card will have a dupli­cate of itself. If you are already con­fused per­haps you should play Mem­o­ry with them instead. You also need a pen and paper for score­keep­ing pur­pos­es.

Help­ful Terms:
Bid: Amount of tricks that must be tak­en. A bid is a num­ber in a par­tic­u­lar suit or no-trump [high or low].

Trick: Four cards, one from each play­er’s hand.

Trump: The most pow­er­ful suit for a par­tic­u­lar hand. Trump is deter­mined by bid­ding before each hand is played.

No-trump: A bid of High or Low means that the high­est card that fol­lows suit in a trick takes the trick.

Bow­ers [right, left]: In a Trump bid, bow­ers are the jacks of col­or. the Right Bow­er is the Jack of the suit bid, the Left Bow­er is the jack of the oth­er suit in the same col­or. Ex: If Spades are Trump, the Jack of Spades is the Right Bow­er and the Jack of Clubs is the Left Bow­er. There are two Right Bow­ers and Two Left Bow­ers in Dou­ble Bid Euchre.

Reneg: Fail­ure to fol­low suit.

Euchre: When the team with­out the bid pre­vents the team with the bid from get­ting the num­ber of tricks they bid upon. This is also called ‘going set.’

Object:
To score 52 tricks.

Rules:

  • A play­er must always fol­low suit. Fail­ure to do so results in a reneg and loss of the hand.
  • A team wins if and only if they score 52 tricks or more by win­ning their bid or by euchre­ing the oppo­nent.
  • The per­son who wins the bid has the lead.
  • The per­son who takes the trick has the lead.
  • The last trick may be looked at by any play­er; pro­vid­ed that no cards have been played since it was tak­en.
  • The first instance of any card takes prece­dence over the oth­er instance. Ex: If both Right Bow­ers are played in the same trick, the first one played takes prece­dence.
  • Play pro­ceeds clock­wise begin­ning with the per­son who has the lead.

Game­play:
The deal­er offers a cut to the per­son on their right and then deals card three at a time clock­wise around the table. When each play­er has twelve cards, the play­er to the left of the deal­er offers an ini­tial bid. Bid­ding also pro­ceeds clock­wise until it comes to the deal­er who has the last bid. The high­est bid is then marked down and the per­son who made the bid leads.

Trump rank is deter­mined in this way: If Trump is Spades the Jack of Spades [Right Bow­er] is the high­est card, the Jack of Clubs [Left Bow­er] is the sec­ond high­est and in descend­ing order of impor­tance Ace, King, Queen, Ten, Nine. Trump beats any card in a non-trump suit. Thus a nine of Spades beats any off-suit Ace. If no trump cards are played in the trick, the high­est card in the led suit takes the trick.

Scor­ing:
The num­ber of tricks each team has tak­en at the end of the hand is added to pre­vi­ous hands. If a team is euchred they lose points in the amount that they bid. The score can be neg­a­tive.

Tomor­row: How to Play Dou­ble Bid Euchre Part II: Strat­e­gy

How to Play Dou­ble Bid Euchre Part III: How to Real­ly Play Dou­ble Bid Euchre

28 thoughts on “How to Play Double Bid Euchre Part I: Basic Gameplay”

  1. hmm very inter­est­ing. I knew how to play sin­gle deck Euchre and how to play dou­ble and sin­gle deck pinochle. I might have to take this one up as well now.

  4. I dun­no, you’ve nev­er played dou­ble deck pin­ocle with my extend­ed fam­i­ly.….

  5. We play with 8 tricks and no 9’s and 10’s and only play to 32. With a Chica­go Stlye of shoot­ing it with 2 cards from your part­ner.

  7. In Coshoc­ton Ohio we call this Hausey.…and just like the guy from Chica­go said…you can try and take all of the tricks and trade two cards face down with your part­ner — or one card hausey.…There are card clubs all over Coshoc­ton play­ing this !!!  it’s great…I nev­er did under­stand why some­one would waste their time play­ing euchre…

  8. Can some­one help me ?  My hus­band and I are avid euchre and bridge play­ers, and are always look­ing for new card games.  A few days ago, I met a love­ly group of ladies from Coshoc­ton play­ing Hausey at The Inn at Hon­ey Run in Millers­burg.  I under­stand the play and the rules, but I need to ask 1 bid­ding ques­tion and 2 scor­ing ques­tions.  When a per­son bids, does he also name his suit (as in bridge bid­ding) or does he bid only a num­ber (as in euchre bid­ding)?  When the declar­er pass­es 4 cards to his part­ner in exchange for 4 oth­ers, and then plays the hand alone, how many points does his team score if he takes all the tricks?  Like­wise, if the declar­er plays the hand alone (with­out pass­ing and receiv­ing cards from part­ner), how many points are scored?  Thanks for the help on this.  I can’t wait to play this game with my friends back home.

  9. Is there a down­load for dou­ble euchre? I tried Scott Alber’s but it won’t work on an XP oper­at­ing sys­tem.

  10. I have no idea if there is a dou­ble euchre game avail­able. I wish there was, because no one in Cleve­land has even heard of the game.

  12. I think my dad invent­ed this game ! Just kid­ding. He did play it almost every night at the local pool hall in the small town where I grew up in Ohio. My cousins all live in Holmes Coun­ty. We call the game Haussey, short for Haussen­ph­ef­fer (sp?) The bid­ding starts with the per­son to the left of the deal­er when play­ing “part­ners” ( there is a 3 hand­ed ver­sion as well, more lat­er), the low bid is 6 tricks going up from there. There is only 1 round of bid­ding, so high bid­der gets to call trump. When you bid a “Haussey”, you are claim­ing you can take every trick, and you go it alone, except your part­ner can pass you 2 of his best cards before play begins, at which time you lay 2 of your worst cards aside, and start play. Your part­ner bows out for that hand. If you get all tricks, you get dou­ble the amount of points.
    When you play 3 hand­ed Haussey, you deal all the cards except 3 ( this is called the wid­ow hand) bid­ding starts at 8, who­ev­er gets the bid gets the wid­ow hand, and dis­cards 3 of the worst cards, play begins, scor­ing is the same as part­ners, in essence every­one plays with­out a part­ner in 3 hand­ed, you can still bid a haussey, and get all the tricks and dou­ble the points. I love this game, grew up on it, and wish I could find some­one here in Boise who knows how to play ! Feel free to email me if I can help.
    Diana (Clark) Roskens
    for­mer­ly of War­saw, Ohio

  13. hi could you help me out please, when play­ing bid euch­er and your part­ner gets the bid on no trump high when he calls out an ace clubs and l have the oth­er ace or king do l give these out so he knows where they are in oth­er words do l always give my best cards to my part­ner in no trump high. low no trump is new to me when play­ing it do you always get rid of your high­est cards regard­less who has the bid. could you send me an answer to my e‑mail it would be great­ly appreciated.thank you barb

  14. by ‘calls out’ do you mean leads ? I can’t think of any instances where you would not play your worst (ie an ace in low no trump) when your part­ner already has the trick. In high and low no trump espe­cial­ly there is a con­cept of the ‘stop­per’. Many times the bid­der has one big suit, say 6 or more of a suit begin­ning with, say, 9/9/10 in low. They hope to play thethe 9/9/10 to clear out the oth­er low cards, then play all their high­er ones. If you have say A/A/K/10 you can stop them at 3 tricks by play­ing the high­er cards first, sav­ing your 10. Also, if you are the per­son with that bid, it is wise to have stop­pers in the oth­er suits, so even if you get ‘stopped’ in your main suit you can get back to it. Or pray that your part­ner saved his ‘stop­pers’. One way to do this is when you are out of the suit played, dis­card cards in the suit(s) where you have no poten­tial stop­pers, and save all the cards in the suit (like that A/A/K/10 .….) for lat­er use. Your part­ner will appre­ci­ate it.

  15. We play a ver­sion with 6 play­ers. The deal­er deals cards to only 5 play­ers with a “wid­ow” of 3 cards. the deal­er sits out for that hand. You can also get a “part­ner”. The 1st per­son to play the Ace of trump is auto­mat­i­caly the bid­ders part­ner for that hand. Kind of a two edged sword cuz the part­ner gets the same score as the bid­der if the bid­der makes their bid or “go’s set”

  16. Our fam­i­ly plays a ver­sion of Haazie (?)we call Baltic Haazie. Don’t ask me why we just have always called it that. We use only face cards and two decks. Four play­ers-two teams. We deal 3 cards‑2 cards‑3 cards…no one card deals. We bid by the num­ber of tricks we think we can get start­ing with a 4 bid as the low­est you can bid. If you win the bid you call suit (includ­ing no-trump) and lead first. If you want to bid a “lit­tle” one you can request two of your part­ners cards in the suit you have made it. If you get all the tricks you score 16 points…if you do not get all the tricks you go back 8 points. The oppos­ing team scores the num­ber of tricks they took to set you. If you win the bid by bid­ding a “big one” you have to play your own cards with no help from your part­ner. If you take all the tricks, you score 32 which is the game. If you fail to take all the tricks your score is minus 16. At any time a per­son bids a “lit­tle one” or a “big one” that bid may be tak­en by the deal­er. If a play­er bids a “lit­tle one” the only way anoth­er play­er can win the bid (Oth­er than the deal­er) is to bid a “big one”. We have played this for years…I hate to play reg­u­lar Euchre because it is so bor­ing!

  17. I for­got to say that when you receive two of your part­ner’s card you must dis­card two from you own hand before pick­ing up the two cards from your partner..sorry!

  18. I don’t know exact­ly how to spell it,but we played “hausey” all the time as a kid in south­east­ern PA.I thought it was some kind of PA Dutch game.In our “ver­sion” when you called HAUSEY,which meant that you were going to try to take all of the tricks,you could call no trump(if you wanted)and just have all aces high.

  19. Love this game! We play here in Coshoc­ton all the time with fmi­ly & friends. Any­one know of an online ver­sion of this game to down­load?

  21. Try this scor­ing vari­a­tion that we used in Col­lege:

    Ten points for every trick won up to the num­ber bid, then only ONE point for every trick over and above the bid. Play the game to 500 points instead of 52 tricks. This adds incen­tive to bid­ding high.….. 🙂

    If you get set you lose a mul­ti­ple of ten points times your bid.……and your oppo­nents get ten points for every trick that they win.

    Hap­py deal­ing -

  22. We learned the basic game called “Hausey” here from Ohio (Newark) retirees in Florida–so we call it “Newark Rules” euchre. We play to 41 (for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son) and a team can win with defen­sive tricks. We call the “going alone” ver­sions “Big Moon” (no card from the part­ner) and “Lit­tle Moon” (one card from the part­ner). The scor­ing on that is plus-32 for a suc­cess­ful Big Moon, plus-16 for a suc­cess­ful Lit­tle Moon. If set on one of these, it’s minus-16 for the Big Moon and minus‑8 for the Lit­tle Moon.

    We don’t name trump in the bid­ding, and it’s inter­est­ing from these posts to see that some ver­sions of the game use trump-nam­ing bid­ding. In a Big or Lit­tle Moon sit­u­a­tion, you ask your part­ner for “your best (what­ev­er trump will be)” or “your best card” if play­ing No Trump. Even if you have a run to play No Trump, you can’t name the suit, and if you don’t get an ace, things get dicey.

    What­ev­er the vari­a­tion, these are all great games. We play them a lot (now retired in North Car­oli­na), along with anoth­er equal­ly-inter­est­ing game, Spades.

  23. We play at the Sr. Cen­ter in Dresden,O. My ques­tion is: how many points do you get if you go Hausey with no help from your part­ner and take all the tricks? We cur­rent­ly get 32 points for lon­ers. I always thought it was more.

  25. I’m a 72 yr. old woman from New­com­er­stown, Ohio and have been play­ing haussy for over 50 years. I’ve been in a haussy club for over 40 yrs and love the game. Have start­ed play­ing euchre at our local Sr. Cen­ter, but it can’t com­pare to haussy. We play with all face cards, (no nines or tens) and use a dou­ble deck, with the bid­ding start­ing at 4, 5, or 6, and if you can bid six, you should be able to go haussy and get two or one card from your part­ner. You can bid in suit or no trump, (Ace high). If you bid 4 and take 4 tricks you have made your bid and get a point for each trick you took. If the oth­er team took tricks, they get a pt. for each trick they take. If you bid and make a haussy, you would get 16 pts. and if you get “set” (don’t take all the tricks), you go back 8 pts. If you go a “lon­er” play­ing by your­self with what you have in your hand, you get 32 pts., which means you have won the game and if you get “set” on this hand, you go back 16 pts. This is how we play the game in New­com­er­stown, Ohio.

  26. I learned to play Hausey in Coshoc­ton, OHIO and belonged to a club there. All my high­school class mates played this game when ever we got togeth­er. I have since for­got­ten. Now live in Penn­syl­va­nia and here they play “500” and Euchre. Like all card games, Bridge includ­ed.…

  27. Ques­tion for you, if you bid say ( 5 High ) and make 6 do you score what you bit or the hands you’ve tak­en.
    I believe you should only score what you’ve bid. That would make the game a lot more inter­est­ing and make you push your­self to be a bet­ter bid­der of the real strength of your and and part­ners hand.

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