Euchre
Euchre
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Euchre

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Euchre

Euchre or Eucre (/ˈjuːkər/ YU-kər) is a trick-taking card game played in Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, Upstate New York, and the Midwestern United States. It is played with a deck of 24, 25, 28, or 32 standard playing cards. There are normally four players, two on each team, although there are variations for two to nine players.

Euchre emerged in the United States in the early 19th century. There are several theories regarding its origin, but the most likely is that it is derived from an old Alsatian game called Jucker or Juckerspiel. Euchre was responsible for introducing the joker into the modern deck of cards, first appearing in Euchre packs in the 1850s.

Euchre has a large number of variants and has been described as "an excellent social game".

Eucre is briefly mentioned as early as 1810, being played in a gaming house alongside all fours, loo, cribbage, and whist. In 1829, uker was being played with bowers on a steamboat in the American Midwest. The earliest written rules appeared in 1844.

The mode of play and terminology of Euchre have resulted in several theories which suggest that it has an origin in Spanish Trionfo, French Ecarté or Triomphe, or Alsatian Jucker. An early American theory was that Euchre was brought into the United States by the German settlers of Pennsylvania, and from that region it was disseminated throughout the nation. The 1864 edition of The American Hoyle disputes its alleged German heritage, tracing the game's origin to Pennsylvania itself in the 1820s. It goes on to surmise that a "rich German farmer's daughter" had visited Philadelphia and carried home a confused memory of Écarté, which then developed into Euchre.

Yet another theory is that Euchre may have been introduced to America by immigrants from the counties of Cornwall or Devon in southwest England, where it remains a hugely popular game. Euchre was introduced into Devon in turn by French prisoners of The Napoleonic Wars, imprisoned in Dartmoor Prison between 1805 and 1816. American prisoners were also housed there during the War of 1812.

Card game historian David Parlett believes that Euchre is derived from an eighteenth-century Alsatian card game named Jucker or Juckerspiel, pronounced "yooker". Clues to a possible German origin are the names of the trump Jacks. Bower is phonetically identical with the German word Bauer which normally means farmer, but also refers to the Jack in playing cards. Another word probably derived from German is "march", which is the literal translation of Marsch, itself an abbreviation of Durchmarsch and the German for a slam in many card games.

Other words or phrases that reflect a German origin are: "maker" from Macher, short for Spielmacher i.e. "game maker", the person who determines the type of game to be played; "euchred" from gejuckert; "having a dog from every county" from aus jedem Dorf ein Köter i.e. "a mongrel from every village", a common expression in German card games; "cards away" from Karten weg or Kart' ab, an expression in games from the Palatinate/Saarland region for the same announcement, "bridge" possibly from Pritsche, a plank bed, hence a place of safety.

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