Power Euchre Volume III: Psychology and Decision Making in Euchre

by Eric Zalas

Power Euchre Volume Psychology and Decision Making in Euchre provides the competitive euchre player with simple techniques to predict your opponent’s thinking style and the tools to use that competitive intelligence against them to win big. This extremely well-researched book contains 82 tables, charts and graphics packed with information to help make you a dominating Power Player at euchre. Included is a simple but powerful chart that predicts the average euchre hand performance based on a hand strength formula – a must have for any serious euchre player. The focal point of author Eric Zalas’ third volume in the Power Euchre series is to critically examine the psychology and decision making habits of two euchre player the Aggressive Player and the discriminating Power Player. He accomplishes this by systematically walking the reader through a scholarly introduction into the latest research on cognition including fast and slow thinking systems, cognitive bias, and System 1 and 2 thinking. After explaining how players think, the author presents extraordinary data on the three kinds of decisions that euchre players unconscious decisions; simple decisions; and complex decisions. Using data based on over 18,000 hands played, Power Euchre Volume III clearly presents a logical story demonstrating three (1) Aggressive Players naming trump with weaker hands make 47% more complex decisions than Power Players; (2) there is a very strong statistical correlation between making complex decisions and getting euchred; and (3) there is a very strong statistical correlation between getting euchred and losing in euchre. The author devotes a full four chapters of the book to a revealing, in-depth analysis showing why consistently naming next is a losing strategy in euchre. Data presented for twenty-nine different hand scenarios shows that naming next results in getting euchred 44.2% of the time and has a mean expected outcome of negative 0.24 points every time you make the play based on the analysis of over 4000 hands played. The reader is also provided with a short Cognitive Reflection Test to help them determine their own specific thinking style and how they might consider adjustments to their critical decision making, cognitive biases, and assumptions made as a way to develop a new, winning approach to the game of euchre.

253 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 31, 2016