How to Play Double Bid Euchre Part II: Strategery

This is Part II of my How to Play Dou­ble Bid Euchre series which began with How to Play Dou­ble Bid Euchre Part I: Basic Game­play, yes­ter­day and will con­clude with How to Play Dou­ble Bid Euchre Part III: How to Real­ly Play Dou­ble Bid Euchre, tomor­row. Woo.

Strat­e­gy:

Bid­ding: If you are the first per­son bid­ding, always give your part­ner some sort of bid. Even a bid of one is bet­ter than pass­ing. You must trust your part­ner to under­stand that your bid is a bid of no con­fi­dence. A bid of 5 tricks is a good start but real­ly any­thing is accept­able. Hav­ing the first lead is quite impor­tant, because you can con­trol the game if you play your cards right. Thus, the high­er the bid the greater the chance that you will have first lead. Beware, how­ev­er, of over­bid­ding. If you go set, you’ve most like­ly screwed your­self. You can slight­ly over­bid your hand and depend on your part­ner for the trick. I tend to under­bid my hand just so I can bust out a sur­prise if need be. The way you bid also depends on your part­ner’s per­son­al­i­ty. When I play with my uncle, I know he likes to take risks and might over­bid by two or three tricks just to get the bid. So by under­bid­ding I ensure that we’ll have a reserve when the time comes.

No-trump bids can swing two ways. If you have a shload of Aces then it is pret­ty obvi­ous that you bid based on how many you have. You can also bid high suit [although you don’t name the suit]. Here is how. If you’ve got both Aces and both Kings in Dia­monds and you’ve got oth­er Dia­monds as well, but no good Bow­er spread you can bid high and if you win the bid lead with your Aces, then lead with your Kings. With a no-trump bid, no one will be able to get in on your Dia­mond action until you run out of them. It works the same way with a no-trump low bid.

Tak­ing Tricks:
If you are short suit­ed, get out of suit as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Don’t reneg. If you have the lead, start out strong [with the Right Bow­er] and pay atten­tion to the trump that have been played and who played them. If you can’t lead with a bow­er toss out an off-suit Ace and hope for the best. If you don’t have any bow­ers and run out of Aces, throw some­thing low and off-suit, prefer­ably some­thing that will get short-suit you. Watch your part­ner care­ful­ly, the first time they don’t fol­low suit or don’t trump make sure you note what suit they played. This is most like­ly a hint that they are strong in that suit. So when you run out of good cards, try to get over to them by play­ing some trash from that suit. If you can, always trump your oppo­nen­t’s Ace. If you want to take a trick and the only trump you have is a Right Bow­er, go ahead and use it. A trick is a trick.

Sit­ting:
Say your oppo­nent bids high in Clubs and you have quite a few Clubs in your hand. Enough clubs, say, that you were going to bid them your­self. Don’t Bid! Pass! And then when your oppo­nents start the game you can make them go set by tak­ing tricks from under their noses using your Club hand. This is called ‘sit­ting on’ the oppo­nent. It is oh so fun, and the best way to anni­hi­late a team that does­n’t bid very intel­li­gent­ly.

There is more to write [strat­e­gy being an infi­nite and dynam­ic thing] but I’m tired of blog­ging for today.

5 thoughts on “How to Play Double Bid Euchre Part II: Strategery”

  1. I’m just learn­ing to re-play bid-euchre after 30+ years … Mon we learned some strat­e­gy and played a few games with oth­er begin­ners … last night we played with the local bid-euchre group … I was soooo ner­vous and could­n’t con­cen­trate … need­less to say — I played hor­ri­bly … and need to build up con­fi­dence in bid­ding — HELP !! .. Jai

  2. I just start­ed play­ing bid and need to find out how to play on line.
    The pplace I play starts with a 4 bid then goes to 7–14 or 8–16.
    I would like to play on line so I can learn more. Do you know any place to log on. Thank You, J.D..

  3. I AM KINDA NEW AT BID EUCHRE AND MAKING MISTAKES I NEED SOME TIPS ON BIDDING AND I CANT PRINT OUT THE INFORMATION YOU SUGGESTED ABOVE AND WOULD LIKE MORE TIPS ON BIDDING PLEASE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. MY PROBLEM IS ALSO IM 72 YEARS OLD AND CANT REMEMBER ALL THE CARDS PLAYED I DO WATCH FOR THE BOWERS WHEN I BID BUT I FORGET TO WATCH FOR MY PARTNERS FIRST TRICK WHEN THEY DO NOT FOLLOW SUIT ANY SUGGESTIONS OR HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED I REALLY LIKE THE GAME BUT IM CONSTANTLY GETTING SUGGESTIONS FROM OTHER PLAYERS WOULD LIKE TO MOVE UP FROM ROOKIE STATUS. THANKS LIKE THE PLAYER ABOVE I GET NERVOUS WHEN I PLAY AND HARD TO CONCENTRATE.

  4. I play at a cou­ple of clubs in my area and we are won­der­ing if the deal­er is allow to match the call bids or do they have to go one bet­ter
    and we are not allowed to match a moon

  5. Hi Car­ol,

    I don’t think it mat­ters, par­tic­u­lar­ly. Deal­er match sounds like a house rule to me, we always played that if deal­er wants the bid, they have to be the high bid. I’ve nev­er heard of some­one try­ing to match a moon, that would be gut­sy.

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