It’s not who gets to nine first, it’s who gets to ten first. 

If you ever played the card came euchre you’ve probably heard that said.

 It’s a game, played to 10 points and you can be down 9 to 0 and come back and win.   It’s not an easy game to explain, it’s only played with face cards and 9’s and 10’s and sometimes a jack is the high card but not always and you have to follow rules to play your cards, but within the rules you can play them any way  want. 

You have to follow “suit” of the card played before you, but if you get control of the hand, you get to make people try to follow suit.

You have to get 3 points in each hand to get one point for the game, after that the scoring gets a little complicated.

 And you have a team mate or partner, but they don’t always help you even if they want to.   It’s fast and fun and we used to play it all the time in high school.   It’s still played in fire houses and legion halls for fun or in tournaments for a few bucks.

I love playing it.   Something about the strategy of it and anyone can learn and be good at it.

These days, poker seems to be much more popular.   We used to play that in high school too, but I was never very good at it.

It seems to be good at poker, you either need to be a good liar or a little bit of a bully.

In poker, you get cards, and then you try to convince people that your cards are better than theirs or fool them into thinking their cards are better than yours.

To do this, you lie about your cards and how good or bad they are.

You can also try and bully your opponent buy pushing all you chips in forcing them to do the same or fold, quit.

Poker is huge, you can watch it on tv, play it in all the casinos, they have games at corporate meetings.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen euchre on espn.

But a lot of people are obsessed with poker.  

It’s a model for society.

Big business leaders who take risks are called poker players.

They take the skills at they have at the poker table and use them in the in the meeting room.

They try and read the other persons face to learn their hand without tipping their own.

They might lie a little bit about what they have, or try to bully the other person into making a deal based on what they can convince them is true.

I can see where it’s effective, I’m just not good at it.

I’m more of a euchre player.    I know the cards I have and I play them the best I can, within the rules.  I’ll count on my teammate to help me out if they can.

I might play my cards in a different order then the other players might think I would, but I have to follow the rules.

And I trust that they will.

That’s a hard part these days, will everyone follow the rules.    You can’t tell if everyone is going to be as honest as you would want them to be, and  I  can’t help that.

Maybe it makes me a weaker person, maybe I will get bullied by the poker player,

But it’s what I’m good at, and I’d rather be honest and loose then cheat and win.

How would things be different if we all thought that way.

If everyone played by the same rules.

If everyone took the cards they were dealt, and did the best they could with them.

I guess you’d win some and lose some, but it would be interesting.

Why not give it a try.

Pick up that jack.

Lead with power.

Throw off suit once in a while to keep everyone honest and see what they have.

Count on your partner for a point and go for it.

And sometimes, when the cards look right, go alone.

In a world full of poker players, try playing euchre.

It’s not who gets to nice first, it’s who gets to 10 first.