It's a midwest thing, you might not understand

Saturday, the U of M alumnni club hosted a euchre tourament. For those with no ties to the midwest, this is a card game consisting of cards 9 through ace. You play with four players, two teams and five tricks. Four cards are left and the dealer flips of the top card and each player can decide to order up the dealer. If someone orders up the dealer, the dealer picks up the card and discards one card and that becomes trump. If no one calls up the dealer, someone can call up another suit, going clockwise. The suit that is called up are the most powerful cards. If hearts are called up, then the order of most powerful are jack of hearts, jack of diamonds, ace of hearts, king of hearts, queen of hearts, ten of hearts and nine of hearts. You must follow suit. That's the basic deal. You play up to ten points. If you call it up and get three or four tricks you are awarded one point, if you win all five, you get two points. If you only win one or two the other team is awarded two points and is called a euchre. You can also go alone, meaning your partner doesn't play. If you win three or four, you only get one point, but if you win all five, you gain four points.

The tourney was a best of three games. In the first round, my partner was no help and we lost 10-5. The second game was a mo' turner and we won 6 of the last 7 points and won 10-5. The rubber match, the mo' was still in our favor and we euchred them on the first hand and continued to roll and were up 9-0. Then, something happened, similar to an unassisted triple play. They euchred us, then they went alone, 9-6. And as the finaly dagger, they went alone again and upset us 10-9! I was stunned for the next five minutes...

All in all, it was a good time. I hung out with some good people, only wish the results would have been better.