There are positions enough, where the king is the only card of re-entry and where, unless the fourth hand can get in with the ace and draw the trumps, the game is over, but it is not so here; the coup succeeds, simply and solely, because, by a most improbable chance, the fourth hand holds one, while the second player holds two of the suit. Genuine, unadulterated bumble-puppy! Whenever I am induced to propound a system of Whist philosophy, enlivened with texts from the Gospel according to Cocker (absit omen), its fundamental principle will be that four in thirteen goes twice.
If I with king and another head the queen and make it, and have nothing else to do, I can return the suit, ruff the third round and make three consecutive tricks; not a bad thing in these hard times when the rental of our estates is constantly diminishing, and the income tax has gone up another penny.
Now suppose I pass it and my partner makes the ace, he must open a new suit. We have had a surfeit of statistics lately, still, if the gentleman at present in possession of the calculating machine of the late Mr. Babbage would kindly turn the handle, and let me know how many tricks on the average are lost by merely opening a suit, I should be much obliged to him. When the leader and his partner either hold the whole of it, or nothing at all, it may be done with impunity, but under ordinary circumstances it usually entails a loss of one trick and often two.
I have considered at some length the original lead of the longest suit, and the lead of the penultimate, because on these two commandments hang all the latter-day law, but not the profits: for on the strength—for want of a more appropriate word—of these figments, at this very moment our guide is attacking the recognised play of the third hand, our philosopher is suggesting an entirely new set of proceedings for the second hand, while both guide and philosopher are doing their level best to assist our friend in New York to bouleverse the leads.
PILLAR NO. 2.—ILLUSTRATIVE WHIST-HANDS.
If you watch a thousand ordinary whist-hands, the great bulk will be illustrative of (1) human stupidity; a few (2) of super-human cunning, and out of the remainder the faddist may pick out (3) one or two to countenance any form of mania from which he may be suffering at the moment.
The first class—always provided that you meet it in the spirit and not in the flesh—is often amusing.
The second is, if skilful, generally open to the objection that, as the same result might be attained by a more simple and equally legitimate method of play, there is an enormous amount of good skill gone wrong.
The third class—and this is the class we have now to deal with—is never amusing, seldom skilful, and not uncommonly misses its tip altogether; for instance, two hands given in the ‘Theory of Whist,’ to illustrate certain leading principles of the game, were promptly gibbeted by another eminent authority, and are still hanging in chains in the Westminster Papers, for September and October, 1873, as “most striking examples of brute force and stupidity.”
In any case they prove nothing. Suppose some malefactor, with a turn for leading singletons, were to bring before the public a dozen or two of hands illustrative of results which would make any leader of the top card but three livid with envy, at the same time suppressing two, four, or six dozen hands, where the lead had brought him to condign grief, would that in any way tend to show the lead was good?