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The game of Euchre, it is one of the most fascinating histories of card games because
Euchre nowadays is indigenous to the Midwest and most of Ontario and some of the border
states. But Euchre actually has a European flavor, and it's really in dispute as to where,
Euchre, Euchre's origins start. Some people feel that Euchre came in from France or the
Alsace region and the word Jucker, J.u.c.k.e.r., for joker, and jokers were added to decks
of cards in the 1870s, 1880s, so there's one historian who feels that Euchre came in through
French and Napoleon and up through New Orleans and so forth. I don't think Euchre was played
in New Orleans in the 1800s but they said it was and so forth. John Pagat, who runs
a wonderful card game site, www.pagat.com, is a great card historian, and he has research
that say that the English Navy brought it into the colonies and that it flourished in
colonies in Pennsylvania Dutch country and so forth and so on, so there's certainly a
feeling that Euchre maybe came, came from there. And other people, other people feel
that it came a different parts of Europe and was called a cart maybe from Spanish or maybe
the English game rough in honors that Hoyle gives some attribution to it. But wherever
it came from, it has become an absolute mainstay in the Midwest. If you're in Ohio or Indiana
or most of western Pennsylvania. Michigan, my God, it's Euchre country, so there's a
little bit of history on Euchre, and it's been a popular game for well, about 150 years
in the U.S. and was the number one card game from 1850 to about 1910 in the U.S.