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Euchre Call Odds

Euchre tables argue about the same thing every night: was that a call or a pass? The received wisdom is folklore, handed down and rarely tested. This tool tests it, by dealing out the hand thousands of times and playing it to the end.

Learn the game Skip to the tool

01 / The game

How euchre works

Four players, two partnerships, and a short deck of 24 cards running nine through ace in each suit. If you already play, skip ahead. If you do not, this is everything the tool assumes you know.

  1. Deal five cards each

    Twenty of the 24 cards go out. One of the remaining four is turned face up to propose a trump suit, and the last three are never seen by anyone.

  2. Round one: order it up, or pass

    Any player can order the dealer to pick up the upcard, which makes its suit trump. The dealer discards one card in exchange.

  3. Round two: name a different suit

    If everyone passes, players get a second chance to name any suit except the one that was turned down. This tool models the stick-the-dealer variant, where the dealer has to name something rather than throw the hand in.

  4. Take three of five tricks

    The team that named trump has to win at least three. Three or four is worth one point, all five is worth two. Fall short and the other team euchred you, and they take two points instead.

  5. Or go alone

    A caller can set their partner's hand aside and play the hand three against one. Taking all five that way is worth four points, which is most of a game in one hand.

The part that trips people up

Trump is not the six cards you would expect. The jack of trump becomes the highest card in the game, called the right bower. The other jack of the same color leaves its own suit entirely and joins trump as the second-highest card, the left bower.

  1. J♣right bower
  2. J♠left bower
  3. A♣
  4. K♣
  5. Q♣
  6. 10♣
  7. 9♣
Clubs as trump, strongest first. The jack of spades is now a club, so trump holds seven cards and spades are down to five.

02 / Why it is hard

Why the odds resist a clean answer

Five cards and a 24-card deck looks small enough to solve on paper. It is not, and the reasons stack up.

The bowers

The deck changes shape

Ranking depends on which suit is trump, so the same five cards are a different hand in every suit. Each one has to be worked out from scratch.

Hidden cards

Three cards never appear

Twenty cards are dealt and one is turned up, so three stay face down all hand. In a deck this short, a single unseen card moves the result far more than it would with 52.

Position

Your seat changes the answer

Where you sit relative to the dealer decides who leads, who gets the upcard, and how much you know when the decision reaches you. One hand is a call in one seat and a pass in another.

Partnership

Your partner's hand is not independent

Every card you hold is a card they cannot have. The two hands are correlated, so treating them as separate draws gives the wrong number.

Scoring

The payoffs are lopsided

One point for three tricks, two for all five, four for a loner who takes all five, and two to the defenders if they euchre you. The question is never just whether you will win the hand.

Stick the dealer

Sometimes passing is not allowed

When the dealer has to name a suit in round two, the whole second round changes, and so does what everyone before them should do.

A closed-form answer would have to carry all of that at once. Simulation is easier and honest about its own error, so the tool deals thousands of hands from the cards you have not seen, plays each one out, and reports what happened.

03 / The tool

Run a hand

Enter a hand and an upcard, or deal a random one. Every number below the table has a note under it saying what it measures.

Call Setup

Use cards like AH, JD, 10S, 9C.

Expert recommendation -

Generate a hand and estimate odds.

How the recommendation works
  • Call: positive net value, good make rate, and acceptable euchre risk.
  • Lean call: playable but score/table context matters.
  • Lean pass: gray area, but the risk/reward is not attractive.
  • Pass: high euchre risk or clearly negative net value.
  • Pass; prefer R2: the best second-round call is meaningfully better than ordering the upcard.
hand score - Shape score from trump, bowers, aces, voids, and two-suitedness.
call threshold - Minimum expert-style score for this seat, round, and suit.
margin - Hand score minus the threshold.
team points-Average points your team scores.
net points-Team points minus opponent points.
make 3+ tricks-Chance you avoid being euchred.
march rate-Chance your team takes all five tricks.
euchre risk-Chance defenders score two.
one-point rate-Chance of making 3 or 4 tricks.
Seat
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Trump
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Avg tricks
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Four points
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Auto-loner rate
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Samples
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Shape
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Threshold basis
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