How to Play · Lesson 10 of 10

Going Alone

When is your hand strong enough to try for four points.

What A Loner Means

When you call trump — either ordering up or naming a suit in Round 2 — you may declare you're going alone. Your partner's cards are set aside and you play all five tricks solo against both opponents.

The reward: if you successfully take all 5 tricks, your team gets 4 points instead of 2. If you take 3 or 4 tricks, you only get 1 point. You need to make a decision based on your hand whether going for the 4 points is better than having your partner help you get a 2 point march.

The Risk

Going alone and winning 3–4 tricks scores only 1 point — the same as a normal call. You gave up your partner's help and gained nothing.

Going alone and winning fewer than 3 tricks means your team is euchred — opponents score 2 points (or even 4 in some variants). Without partner's help, a single bad trump draw or unexpected void can derail a loner.

What Makes a Winning Loner Hand

Ideal loner hands control nearly every trick without needing your partner. Look for most or all of these:

• Right bower and left bower — the top two trump cards guarantee two tricks and bleed the trump from your opponents. Having the Ace or King improves it even more.
• 3+ trump in your hand is pretty much required. 4 trump has very good odds especially with at least one bower. 5 trump should almost always be called.
• Off-suit aces — aces in other suits are automatic winners once you use your trump to eliminate the trump in your opponents' hands and keep the lead (keeping the lead is critical in using off-suits in a loner). You are vulnerable if you have a weak off-suit not led by an ace.
• Having the lead or being able to quickly take the lead in the first trick is critical to loner success. You need to have control of the whole hand in order to be successful.
• 2 suited hands are definitely favored over 3 (having an ace in each off-suit helps justify a loner call with 3 suits). A great loner call example can be a 2 suited hand that has 3 trump with two powerful trump cards and an ace and another card in the other suit. You can use your trump to eliminate opponent's trump and then lead the ace to bleed their off-suit hoping that they can't beat your last card in the same suit as the ace.

When Not to Go Alone

• Missing the right bower — the right bower beats everything else in trump. Without it, both opponents can potentially beat your strongest card. If you know that your opponents have the right (ordering it into either of their hands for instance), you should never call the loner. Exception: If your partner picks up the right, however, you can call the loner without it. You can also safely call it and take a chance that it's buried (either your partner has it in hand or it's in the kitty) if you have 4-5 trump in your hand with mostly high trump.
• Only 2 trump — two trump even if they are both bowers is typically not sufficient to take all 5 tricks alone.
• 4 suited or 3 suited with weak suits - scattered hands with too many suits where you can't take tricks with high cards is too much of a weakness without your partner for help.