Euchre

Proof of my world championship in Euchre (2019-2020)

For those who don't know what Euchre is, it is a regional card game (regional to the Rust Belt, that is). To read the about the history of euchre, here is a probably helpful outside resource, but honestly, who cares about the history of it? The whole reason you clicked on this page was because you were curious about euchre today. Contact me for the rules and strategies if you're wanting to learn Euchre youself. If not, you can read more about my contributions to euchre below.

EuchreBot 1.0

Summer of 2019, I was tasked with "teaching myself Python" for my internship. Once I learned the basics, I decided to hone my skills by developing a rudimentary bot to play Euchre. This bot was thousand of if-else statements, and played generally like I would play. But, it could not adapt, was not based in any science, and could not be used effectively. EuchreBot officially debuted in August of 2019, and won a single game against two human opponents 10-8. However, due to the many imperfections stated earlier, this project was taken back to the drawing board.
At that time, I was working for WooCorp Incorporated (an illegitimate dummy corporation) and the board of WooCorp Inc. decided we needed to bring in an expert. For this reason, esteemed programmer and Bio-statistician Benjamin R. Gochanour was brought in to see what he could contribute.

EuchreBot 2.0

By fall of 2019, I had gained some experience with machine learning, specifically through the pandas library in Python. Ben was able to help and teach me more, and we worked together to plan out how we would create EuchreBot 2.0. Using 4 EuchreBot 1.0 models, over the course of a month we simulated over 4 billion hands (20 billion tricks) of euchre and compiled the results together. We were able to use that to make a tool that when inputting your cards, table position, and top card, tells you exactly what the results of each action you could take would be. This tool can be found here. However, with the arrival of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, our labs in Norman, OK, were forced to shut down. EuchreBot 2.0 was never completed or released in its full form, but could one day be completed as the best and most user friendly euchre tool in history.

Euchre Leagues

While I wasn't busy coding, I was busy running euchre leagues. These leagues, based in Norman, OK, and Tipp City, OH, were great sources of fun and competition for many friends. However, all the official leagues are currently dormant, as interest among my friends died down.

The Future of Euchre

No one knows what the future of Euchre holds. But, if you are an aspiring programmer (in Python) looking to change the game forever (much like Oakland A's manager Billy Beane did to baseball in the early 2000s) please contact me and I'll be happy to provide you with all of my work for free, provided you credit me slightly if you win any awards. I do not have a ton of time to code anything myself these days, but I would be happy to explain my code or lend my 2019-2020 Euchre World-Champion experience to improve your model. Happy euching!