How to Play Defense Against Loners in Euchre

Video Transcript

"Ok, let's look at this hand, and there's a few cards missing from it, but they're not really important to the hand, ok? All right and let's just look at something like this, and then he may have had even a trump of his own, it really doesn't matter, and a club. Ok, now, the rest of his cards are really not important, let's just say that he has picked up this hand and declared diamonds as a loner. That's a nice hand. That's both left, right, four trump and an off-suit king. He has a good shot at making that go. Ok. Now let us suppose that partner decides to lead an ace. The absolute single ace, not two aces, single ace lead against the loner. One of the most putrid leads you can possible make against a loner is an ace and I'm going to tell you why. Ok. We have to give him some meaningless cards, who cares, ok, so he leads the ace and he throws off right. And of course he trumps it. Now he starts the trump suit. He leads that, he gets rid of that, he doesn't have any trump, and he keeps on going. And now, the decision is to be made; he pushes one more trump. Which ace does he keep? He doesn't know he has the King. So which ace does he keep? It goes this and this, and then he hems and haws, and hems and he haws, and he says "oh, ok, I'll get rid of this one? and lo and behold, that walks through. That's the problem with leading aces. Now if you go back to the original hand and let's just say instead of leading that Ace of Hearts, the partner had led say a club, ok? Now we know that he had the King of Spades left, and all these gigantic diamonds, well if he led a club, a small one, and partner went up with the Ace of Clubs, right, then he would have trumped it, and he would come down and now the hand is going to come down to this defense where you have a diamond and a king, and they've got small ones, and he leads a diamond, and they both reduce to this position. He's got that covered and in case this was the King of Hearts, he's got that covered, so never lead a loner against, never lead an ace against a loner, not a single ace, double ace - fine. Ok?"