Most of my fraternity brothers at Eastern Kentucky University played it all the time.
Certainly possible, especially since “bower” is an anglicization of, and was derived from, the German word for farmer, which is “Bauer.”
Are there still steelworkers left in Pittsburgh?
Regarding the geographical distribution of the popularity of Euchre, it was extremely popular in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. When I graduated from college and moved to Milwaukee I was shocked to find that no one played Euchre. They all played this impossible to understand game of Sheepshead. My new acquaintenaces claimed that if I could play Euchre, I could quickly learn Sheepshead. They were wrong.
I believe its popularity is due to the very large German population here in Milwaukee. The actual name of the game is Schafkopf (umlauts omitted cuz I’m lazy).
In versions of spades with which I am familiar, scoring is dependent on accurate bidding after the deal. Underbidding is a lesser pitfall than overbidding, but it’s a pitfall nevertheless.
Let’s say team A bids 7 books and team B bids 6 books (books = tricks). After all 13 books have been played, say team A won 9 books, leaving team B with the other 4.
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Team A would gain 72 points this round. The 7 books they bid and made gives them 70, and the two “overs” they made tacks on 2 points.
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Team B would subtract 60 points from their score for bidding and failing to make 6 books.
The two overs that team A made are significant. Once a team accumulates 10 overs, they subtract 100 points from their score. A team that is significantly behind will often try to make their opponents win extra books (aka “sandbagging” or “skating”), in hopes of forcing a -100 penalty.
Spades games are usually played to 300, 500, or 1000 points.
Depends what you mean by “Pittsburgh”.
While there are coke works and corporate activities related to the manufacture of steel within the city limits, no actual steelmaking is currently done in Pittsburgh.
However, quite a bit of steelmaking is still done in Allegheny County, of which Pittsburgh is the county seat. My brother works at the steel coil line at Irvin Works in West Mifflin. My father recently retired from the Edgar Thompson Works in Braddock, which is a slab making facility. My grandfather and several uncles worked at the Clairton coke works. My father also worked here for about twenty-five years before moving to the Edgar Thompson facility. Clairton is still a working mill.
There are also specialty steel operations in Homestead. I believe both South Korean and Italian steel companies have plants there.
Steel is still a major Pittsburgh-area industry and employer, amazingly enough.
A few things about how we played it:
The dealer would deal each player 5 cards in 2 rounds – first he would give each player between 1 to 4 cards (sometimes only 2 or 3 were allowed, especially in tournaments) and on the 2nd round would give each player enough for them to have 5 cards (i.e. the difference between 5 and what they got the first time). This was at the dealer’s discression.
Example: Dealer deals 4 to the player to his left, then 3, 2, and 1 (the 1 to himself). On the next round he would have to deal 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Couple that with the fact that there are only 24 cards, and stacking the deck is fairly easy. With us, at least, cheating was pretty much expected.
Anybody else deal and/or play this way?
“If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” Stacking the deck was generally considered a talent to appreciate, ‘pause-passing’ by the dealer’s partner was common (you could practically use a timer to determine exactly how good his hand was in the suit that was up), hand signals (e.g. rubbing your ring finger to indicate being good in diamonds) were less common.
We used a 6 and a 4 for keeping score, and ‘Sprouting points’ was one of the most low-class ways to cheat.
When I got to college, my brother taught me how to play the game, and then he taught me how to stack the deck. I don’t know if he learned how to play at college or in the Army. I’ll have to remember to ask him.
I always guessed that Euchre was related to bridge and whist and such games. Since these games all have the concept of trump and tricks, the first part of the play involves bidding or something to decide what is trump, and since people play as partners.
(As for point keeping in Euchre, the old timers around here (Ontario) use a 2 and a 3 in various positions to keep score. Despite playing Euchre since 1977, I don’t play it often enough to use 2 and 3 … I feel like a novice using 5’s)
I think the same is true of spades’s ultimate origin.
One thing to note: it is possible to play spades without partners. When you have five or more players, fewer cards are dealt to each player, and everyone bids for themselves.
Can euchre be played this way?
I’m so glad to hear someone else mention keeping score with a 2 and a 3! That’s the way I learned when my great-grandparents taught me (in Michigan). Just about everyone I play with now looks at me funny if I pull them out instead of the 5’s.
I humbly submit this thread for your perusal, for further discussion of geographical distribution and other general euchre-related things.
There is a way to play 3-man euchre. It’s been a while, but here’s basically what I remember:
You take out the 9’s, deal each person 5 and leave 5 in the “kitty(?)”. The bidder has to get either 2 or 3 (I don’t quite remember). The other players can sit out if they think they won’t get a trick, or they can play. Everybody starts at 25, and you subtract how many tricks you get. If you get euchred (i.e. call it and don’t get 2 or 3; or don’t call it, play, and don’t get any) you add 2 points to your score. First to 0 wins.
I’m thinking that there was some sort of cut-throat element to it, because my brother and I and one of our fraternity brothers once played a game for several hours one night. For a while I kept the sheet of paper that was the scorecard, which was covered front and back.
crozell , how do you keep score to 10 with a 2 and a 3?
The way I was taught, you keep score to 5 just like you normally would (the number of ‘pips’ showing is the score). When you score above 5, you turn one of the cards (whether it’s face up or face down) so it’s at a 90 degree angle to the other card. This essentially signifies ‘add 5’ to the number of pips showing.
So, for example, to score 4, you could have the 3 face up covering up one pip of the 2. Both cards would be oriented the same way. To score a 9, you would still have the same pips showing, but the 3 would be turned so that it is horizontal to the 2.
It is very natural if you’ve grown up seeing it, but I have to admit that it is a bit cryptic if it’s not how you leanred. I don’t know what rationale there was for people to start using it rather than the (seemingly more obvious) 5’s. I do like it better than 5’s (or a 4 and a 6), but maybe that’s just nostalgia talking…
Speaking of using particular playing cards not included in the deal… (and yes, I know I’m the one who first brought it up,) has reminded me of tyzicha. This is a game we played in my family, originally of russian origin I believe, and I’ve never heard of anybody else who plays it (though knowing the SDMB I wouldn’t be too surprised if some of y’all are familair.) Played with the ace through 9 of all four suits by three players, seven dealt to each player and a kitty of three that gets picked up by the maker, who then passes one card to each player, ending up with everybody having eight cards. Trumps are made by declaring marriages, matching king-queen of suit, and points are scored both through marriages and capturing cards, each rank of card having their own value.
Each suit has its own value when ‘married’ and declared as trumps… hearts 100, diamonds 80, clubs 60, and spades 40, and this is critically important during bidding. (And of course, asking ‘how many is a heart marriage worth again’ could be either a big giveaway or a nasty bluff.) So the tradition was to select five cards from among the unused part of the pack… six and four of hearts, eight of diamonds, six of clubs, and four of spades, and display them prominently somewhere on the table as a memory aid.
When I started teaching the game to some friends as a teenager, they immediately dubbed these cards “the idiot cards”, which is how I still sometimes think of them.
/END RANT 
Tyzicha is essentially the Russian word for “one thousand” (tysicha would be a more common transliteration). Is this game played to 1,000 points, by any chance?
Actually, played to either 1001 points or 501 points. (the full name being shortened from ‘tysicha odin’ or something like that… russian for one thousand and one.)
That last point can be the kicker too… according to the rules, the last and game-winning point can only be earned by winning a contract, not as a defender.
Mathochist. I’d like to apologize for my tone.
I also went back and checked my Mathews: Dictionary of Americanisms and he provides the evidence that I asked for. He cites the 1857 edition of Hoyle’s games as saying
Then, in an 1866 book called American Hoyle,
I’m sure this is where the proposed German origins of the game started. There just has been no evidence beyond those early cites to substantiate it.
I’m currently wondering why, if the game is German in origin, it would appear in parts of Canada at an early date? Did the Germans settle much of Canada? Certainly they did PA, and would have taken the game West to IN, MI, OH, etc.
I’ve just taken a quick look around the 'net, and it seems like a lot of the ‘pennsylvania dutch’ germans did move into Ontario… especially mennonites, a religious group related to the Amish (but not quite as restrictive) who were apparently very unpopular after the american revolution because they were conscientious objectors.
Certainly I’ve heard of mennonite groups that are still scattered around Ontario, and my mother, whose family has been in ontario for many generations, says that a relative has traced the family tree back to pennsylvania dutch, as well as united empire loyalists and some welsh immigrants.
PS: From what I’ve heard, it’s an open joke among many serious experts on card games that just about anyone can write a book about card games, call it “the new American revised Hoyle” or something like that, and gain some sort of credibility from using the name Hoyle, despite the fact that the real Mister Hoyle, in his day, wrote about none of the games that are really popular in the 20th century. John Scarne waxed eloquent on this point in “Scarne on cards”, where he bragged that US soldiers in world war 2, looking for a good game of poker, used to ask others how they played poker, and “According to Hoyle” was at first the appropriate countersign. Mister scarne wrote some articles on poker that got included with US armed service propaganda for the troops, pointing out that Hoyle had never heard of poker, and the countersign (supposedly) got changed to “According to Scarne.” (I take that whole yarn with a grain of salt, or perhaps a grain of dope? 
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No need. I wasn’t offering any hard evidence, though I’d not staked a claim. Mostly this leg of the thread started with me being pedantic about phrasing. Still, now we know.
just wanted to thank everyone for their input
while it seems the true origin is forever lost, there has been plenty of information absorbed here
again, thank you!