The sounds of chatter and card-shuffling filled room 125 of the Oakland Center the night of Oct. 22, when Oakland University’s Euchre Club hosted their weekly Pick It Up! event.

The club has been around since 2011 and welcomes students who are looking to take a step back from their stressful school lives and just want to play some Euchre.

Inviting students to learn the Midwest’s best-kept secret, Josh Liske, a junior studying pre-med and Euchre Club president, said that his “pretty chill club” was there to try and teach Euchre to anyone who wanted to learn.

“I’m not very good at explaining this game,” Liske said. “It’s pretty complex.”

“Who can really explain this game?” shouted another member of the club from across the room.

For a game that was created in the mid-1800s, it has hardly evolved and is still just as complicated as it was 150+ years ago.

Simply put, euchre is played with 24 cards. Cards nine through ace of all suits are used, with ace having the highest value. 

The objective of the game is to win the most tricks, or rounds, by having the highest trump card in each round.

One suit is selected at the start of each round. That suit is called the “trump suit.” The jack of the trump suit is the highest trump card.

The second-highest trump is the opposite suit, or “bower.” The bower for spades is clubs and the bower for hearts is diamonds. After the bower, the remaining highest trumps follow in order of the cards’ usual values (nine, ten, jack, queen, king, ace).

There are many other elements of Euchre — like having a partner and picking up or passing, but Liske said that for beginners’ sake, “It is best to just understand the basics first.”

Andrew Alisa, a computer science major at OU, was one of those beginners Wednesday night.

“I don’t want to hold my friends back when they play,” Alisa said.

He was one of a handful of people in the room who were trying to learn the game for a first or second time.

“It’s a nice and safe way to relieve stress with a group of friends,” Alisa said.

The Euchre Club hosts Pick It Up! every Wednesday night in room 125 of the OC from 7:30-9 p.m., and often has refreshments.

Liske and the other members of the club look forward to helping people improve their euchre skills and teaching the newcomers as much as they can.

“Coming here tonight really helped me understand the game. I think I can play without asking my friends a question every turn,” Alisa said.