Espositori

"It takes a good euchre player to turn down a bower!"  You've heard that before.  You've probably even said it a time or two as you attempted to discourage an opponent from picking up the bower when he's dealt himself one as the up card.  Every once in a while it even works, and the dealer passes on the bower and turns it over.  When that happens, you have some interesting knowledge to be applied to the rest of the hand.

In passing on the best card in the deck, the dealer is making a statement.  He is saying, "My hand is poor in that suit."  In fact, about 90% of the time he is saying that he does not have ANY of that suit.  For the rest of the hand you should assume that the dealer has a void in that suit.  This also makes it statistically somewhat more likely that the dealer will have some cards in all of the other suits.  Thus, the dealer has a void, and is likely to have trump (when trump is later named).  How do you play with that knowledge?

If the dealer is your partner then you want to lead that suit at him if you get the chance.  By leading the suit that was turned down by your partner you are giving him the opportunity to use his trump.  The fact that he is short in that suit makes it less likely that your opponents are also short in that suit.  They likely have some, and will have to follow suit to your lead.  You can easily set your partner up to get a trick by leading it at him when you have the chance.

If the dealer is your opponent you want to avoid leading the suit that went down.  The dealer won't have any and your partner probably will.  If you lead it at the dealer you are setting him up to trump the trick.  Don't do it!

When a bower gets turned down you can take advantage of the additional knowledge to improve your play in the hand.  All you have to do is pay attention!