Hoyle's Games Modernized

E-text prepared by Orphaned Projects, Imran Ghory, Keith Edkins, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

PREFACE
To the present generation the name of Edmond Hoyle conveys but a vague meaning, though the phrase according to Hoyle is still now and then used as a synonym for correct play in a card-game.
Hoyle was in fact the Cavendish of his day, and was in many ways a man of special mark. He was born in 1672, and died in 1769, having outlived half-a-dozen monarchs. Of his earlier life little is known. He is said to have been called to the Bar, though whether he ever practised as an advocate is uncertain. In 1742 he was living in Queen's Square, and giving lessons in whist-play, which he was the first to reduce to a scientific method. He had up to that time communicated his system either personally, or in the form of manuscript, but in that year he for the first time published his memorable Short Treatise on the Game of Whist. Of this first edition only two copies (one in the Bodleian Library) are known to exist. Its price was a guinea. It was freely pirated, and this fact was probably the reason that the succeeding editions, of which there were three published in 1743, were issued at the more modest price of two
shillings, each genuine copy being guaranteed by the autograph of the author. Other editions followed, several of which are only now represented by single copies. Of the seventh edition, published in 1747, no copy exists. The eighth (1748) embodied, in addition to the Whist manual, short treatises on Quadrille, Piquet, and Backgammon, which had in the meantime appeared separately. The book was from time to time further amplified, and the eleventh edition (precise date uncertain) is entitled Mr. Hoyle's Games of Whist, Quadrille, Piquet, Chess and Backgammon Complete. The autograph signature to each copy was continued until Hoyle's death. In the fifteenth edition it is replaced by an impression from a wood block.