Participation for Fun

[dgs49]

For reasons that may point to some sort of personal deficiency on my part, I participate in a lot of sports-related activities. I play tennis, bowl, golf, bicycle, and exercise regularly. My tennis, golf, and bowling is done mainly in organized groups or leagues (I bike and exercise by myself, usually).

It is more and more difficult to get people out to participate in these sorts of activities. My tennis group. which used to be a dozen guys playing doubles on three courts every Saturday is down to 4 (over 25 years). We have some subs, but it is like pulling teeth to get them out when we need a sub (one of the regulars is recovering from surgery now, and has missed three weeks).

I'm in two bowling leagues, and they are both gradually losing members, to the point where one of them may simply go out of existence at the end of this year. And the people who bowl with us have a good time every week, and seem to enjoy the companionship. But when a person or couple leave due to relocation or a medical problem, it is almost impossible to get someone to take their place. I have posted on bulletin boards at the bowling alley, at church, in my neighborhood (newsletter), and where I work, but NOBODY is willing to tie up even one evening every other week.

My golf league has gone from 36 golfers to about a dozen over the past ten years. And the strange thing is that most casual golfers are always talking about how they "want" to join a league, so that they will be forced to golf regularly. But they never do it.

Some people shy away from competition and seem to have a subliminal fear of being forced into a competitive challenge against their will, but all of these things are SOCIAL, with only a small element of competition involved. The bowling and golf involve handicap scoring, so it really doesn't matter how good or bad you are; you still have a chance to do well against better players because your score is adjusted. And our tennis group are all old guys (3.2 or so in tennis rating), not intimidating to anyone.

The fitness club where I go is another example of perpetually fading participation, but it is hidden by the numbers of new enrollees. They are constantly signing up new members, and they come out for a couple weeks or a month and then quit. But the club is usually full because the new people joining make up for those who don't come around any more. The common joke/fear is that if every member ever showed up on one day, the fire department would shut the place down.

Why is this? Why do people not enjoy participating in stuff like this.? I actually like it, and would miss it if I didn't have these regular diversions.

[Miles]

Well apparently not everyone feels as you do. I used to enjoy golf, softball, euchre, darts, pool, horse shoes you name it I played it sometimes in leagues others not. I never, however, deemed it unusual that some others found league play not to their liking.

I guess different strokes for different folks applies.

[Joe Guy]

I guess different strokes for different folks applies.

Especially when it comes to golf.

[Gob]

euchre,

You should visit Cornwall Miles!

[Miles]

I was intorduced to Euchre in Western New York many years ago mostly in bars and loved it. Unfortunately here in south western Pa. it is not as popular.

[Gob]

My local pub in Cornwall used to have a Wednesday night euchre school.

[Crackpot]

Euchre School?!

My the Cornish really must be slow.

[Andrew D]

Do you allow leading with trump even if the leading player has non-trump cards in her or his hand?

By the way, the preferable spelling -- at least, according to people with whom I agree, and that is, of course, the highest possible standard of authoritativeness -- is "uker":

Euchre was played and so called (though variously spelt) in early 19th-century America, according to reminiscences published in 1844, where "Uker" is the subject of an incident described by Joe Cowell[2] as taking place on a steamboat trip from Louisville to New Orleans in 1829. Its first description occurs in an American Hoyle of 1845 [3] and the first book entirely devoted to it in 1850 [4].

On linguistic grounds alone there can be no doubt as to its origin in the Alsatian game of Juckerspiel as brought to America by German immigrants. Given that the J is pronounced as a consonantal Y, the spelling "Uker" is a reasonable phonetic representation of "Jucker" for non-German speakers, while the relatively bizarre "Euchre" looks suspiciously like a subsequent refinement made by somebody with a church background influenced by the word "Eucharist". The suggestion that "Euchre" derives in some way from a corruption of "Ecarté" [5] strikes me as both etymologically and genealogically ludicrous.

2.Cowell, Joe, Thirty Years Passed Among the Players in England and America (1844).

3.Anners, Henry F., Hoyle's Games (Philadelphia 1845).

4.The Game of Euchre with its Laws (1850, no further details, cited in OED sv euchre). This book (reports Natty Bumppo in The Columbus Book of Euchre, 1999, page 72) is cited in The Law and Practice of the Game of Euchre, by "a Professor" (Philadelphia 1862).

5.I don't know who started this, but the anonymous author of Euchre - How to play it (London 1886) attributes it (p.11) to "a writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica". More amusingly, R. F. Foster, in Call-Ace Euchre (London, 1904, p.12), writes: "It has been suggested that 'Euchre' might be a corruption of the word 'Eureka', and that it was originally an exclamation used by those opposed to the maker of the trump when they succeeded in getting three tricks".

Friends of mine and I used to spend many happy (and happiness-enhanced) hours playing uker. We don't live near enough to each other to play it much now, but we sure had a lot of fun back then ....

[Rick]

I kill things...

[Joe Guy]

Have you ever played ukerlele?

[Gob]

Do you allow leading with trump even if the leading player has non-trump cards in her or his hand?

Don't know, never played. Card games have never held any interest for me.

By the way, the preferable spelling ...

Then why is it refered to as "EUCHRE" throughout that article?

St Awful euchre league is still up and running.

[dales]

I kill things...

I like things that go>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>BANG!

[TPFKA@W]

They are all trying to get away from you Dave.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I kill things...

I like things that go>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>BANG!

So, you like to play group uker lay lay eh?

[Andrew D]

By the way, the preferable spelling ...

Then why is it refered to as "EUCHRE" throughout that article?

Because that is the most common spelling. The author -- who is also the author of the Oxford Dictionary of Card Games, which suggests to me that he knows what he is talking about -- explains in the article his reasons for preferring "uker".

It seems to be generally agreed that uker -- at least the name, if not the game itself -- is of German origin. (See, e.g., The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) at p. 859 ("G dial. Jucker(spiel).") But the spelling "euchre" is hardly a German formation.

Interestingly, the original Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the spelling "uker" may actually be older than the spelling "euchre". It says that "euchre" was "Formerly also uker ....

As the [url=http://borf_books.tripod.com/euchappx.htm]Columbus Book of Euchre[/url] observes:

Yet another scholar, David Parlett, author of the Oxford Guide to Card Games,
states, “Underlying Euchre is the Alsatian game of Jucker [pronounced about the
same as “euchre”] or Juckerspiel,” implying yet another – this time, German – source
of the word euchre. This is a much more satisfying etymology than the strained con-
clusion that euchre was both a misspelling and a mispronunciation of écarté, and it is
consistent with the German derivation of the word “bower.”

Yet it allows for the influence of écarté on euchre (since Alsace once bordered France, and is now part of France), while it tends to satisfy also the recurring consensus that euchre originated among the Pennsylvania
Dutch (who are of Alsatian and other southwestern German lineage).

Another clue: Scholars tend to agree that euchre gave birth to the joker, as a third and “best” bower. So, an extended hypothesis (extrapolated from Parlett’s): First came the Bauer (the jack), predating both Jucker and euchre. Then Bauers, upon their rise above aces, came to be called also “Juckers”, from the name of the game. Then, as Bauer was Anglicized to bower, and Jucker (with a little French thrown in) to euchre, came the joker – originally a Jucker, perhaps, but pronounced joker because that’s about how an American would pronounce “Jucker” if he saw it in writing. It is important to note, lest you be looking for a shorter cut through these woods (or a way out), that (1) “Jucker” is not German for “joker” (it’s a German surname, also meaning “carriage horse”), and (2) the joker was not depicted on cards as a court jester until after it was already known as the “joker” (some of the early jokers were even blank).

All in all, it appears that "jucker" was Anglicized to "uker" -- hardly surprising, given that Americans speak English (sort of) -- and then "uker" was Francicized to "euchre" for no reason which I have been able to ascertain.

[oldr_n_wsr]

dgs49
I have found that any "newbies" that have joined whatever hobbie they care to join have to overcome the established people and personalities that are already present there. Those personalities may be few, but any newbie is going to be somewhat intimidated even if no intimidation is sent their way. They don't know anyone going in and if they join with friends, that group may only converse with themselves and then go elswhere.

You are established in your groups you hang out with. Any new person is not. Go out of your way to welcome them, and don't just say "hi, welcome to the course/alley/card table". Talk to them, get others of the establishment to talk to them. get to know them and include them in any after game activities (diner for coffee, etc).

I found that same dynamic in some AA groups. Thankfully the group I joined the people were open and honest and willing to introduce me to many others in the group and include me in after meeting activities.