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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.