Suite 02 · Strategy Guides
Strategy guides for the classic card games
Honest strategy for Euchre, Hearts and Spades: counting trumps, planning the pass, bidding by hand strength, protecting a nil and shooting the moon.
Card game strategy has a bad reputation because most of what is printed about it is superstition dressed as folklore. The guides in this suite do the opposite: they start from what can be counted. Trumps outstanding, voids confirmed, tricks already owned, the bags on the board, the queen of spades still asleep. From those counts come the decisions that repeat: when to order up, when to pass, when a nil bid is protection and when it is theatre.
Each guide ends with the mistakes players make for years, because in trick-taking games the fastest way to improve is not to learn a new play but to stop paying for an old one. Read the guide for the game your table plays, then keep the counting habit; it transfers across all of them.
In this suite
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Euchre strategy: order up, or pass?
Euchre strategy is a short list of counts performed quickly: how many trumps are out, who can still have the left bower, and whether this hand pays to play alone.
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Hearts strategy: the pass, voids and the moon
Hearts is a game of avoidance with one audacious exception, and both halves run through the same decision: what to pass before the first trick is played.
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Spades strategy: bidding counts and nil
Spades strategy lives in one habit: converting a thirteen card hand into an honest number before anyone leads, and knowing when the honest number is zero.
Every guide in this suite reads against the Scoring & Sheets arithmetic, and two neighbouring suites extend it: Game Rules and Tournament Formats.