The stick the dealer rule in Euchre
What does "STD" mean in Euchre? It's short for "stick the dealer". To explain how it works, I'll start with how each Euchre hand begins. You can also watch this YouTube video to see how trump is chosen.
Here's how it works. The deck is shuffled and each player is dealt 5 cards. Next comes the phase that decides the trump suit. The top card of the deck is turned face up on the table. This card is called the "up card". Starting with the player to the left of the dealer, each player gets a turn to choose the up card. If someone chooses it, the suit of the up card becomes trump. For example, if the up card is the 9 of Hearts, choosing it makes hearts trump. The up card then goes to the dealer, who has to discard one card from their hand.
The turns go clockwise around the table. So if the player to the left of the dealer passes, the dealer's partner can choose the up card. If they pass, the player to the right of the dealer can choose. If they pass too, the dealer gets the last chance to choose (or "order up" in Euchre jargon).
Suppose all the players pass on the up card. Trump still isn't decided, so there's another round of choosing. The order is the same, starting left of the dealer and ending with the dealer. Each player can choose any of the three other suits, but not the suit of the up card. In the example above, the up card was the 9 of Hearts, so the other suits are clubs, spades, and diamonds. Anyone can pick one of these three suits as trump.
But what happens if the first three players all pass in this second round? Then the dealer has to choose one of the three suits as trump. That's where the "stick the dealer" rule gets its name. The dealer is "stuck" with naming trump. They must pick a trump suit. It can't be the suit of the up card. It has to be one of the other three.
This may sound pretty bad. The dealer may not have good cards in any suit. What if they have a handful of low cards, like Queens, 9s, and 10s? That's a valid hand in Euchre and it can happen!
However, all is not lost. If the other players didn't name a trump suit, it suggests that no one has a strong hand in any suit. It pays to choose trump when you can, so most players will call if they think they can win even 1 point. It's entirely possible for the dealer's team to win the hand after the dealer gets stuck naming trump.
How to avoid stick the dealer
Some people don't like the stick the dealer rule. They don't like being stuck with a poor hand. They feel it's unfair to be forced to choose trump in that spot. Their rules are more lenient. The dealer may pass in the second round instead of being forced to choose trump. Then everyone throws in their cards and a new hand is dealt.
There's a downside to playing this way. The game usually takes longer to finish. And one of the nice things about Euchre is that games tend to be short, often under 10 minutes. It can also make players extra picky about calling trump. If the dealer isn't forced to choose, why should their partner call trump without the perfect hand? My feeling is that without the stick the dealer rule, players are less willing to take risks.
Some people like the stick the dealer rule. I do! Sometimes it puts you in a bad spot with no good choices. But that often works out okay. And everyone is equally likely to get stuck now and then, so you can't really call the rule unfair. I also like a game where everyone takes a little more risk.
But that's just me! Maybe you prefer a more lenient game. Euchre tables at World of Card Games use the stick the dealer rule by default. But you don't have to play that way. There's an option to play only at tables without the stick the dealer rule. To use it, open the options for Euchre. The screenshots below are from 2019, so the site looks different today.
In the options, find the row called "Stick the dealer". If you don't want to sit at tables with the stick the dealer rule, set it to "No" and save.
After that, the site only seats you at Euchre tables without the stick the dealer rule. One exception: ranked Euchre tables always use the stick the dealer rule, so that every game counted on the Euchre leaderboard is played the same way.
You'll still see stick the dealer tables in the list of tables, so take care when you pick a table from that list yourself.
You can try both ways when you play Euchre at World of Card Games. Let me know which you prefer!