Whist; or, Bumblepuppy? Thirteen Lectures Addressed to Children

by John Petch Hewby

With trumps declared against you be particularly careful how you open new suits; surely when you have just succeeded in knocking your partner on the head in one suit, you might give him till the next hand to recover himself, instead of trying to assault him again the very next time you get the lead.[9]

Changing suits is one of the most constant annoyances you will have to contend against; queer temper, grumbling, logic, and so on, if sometimes a nuisance, are sometimes altogether absent, but the determination to open new suits for no apparent reason—unless a feeble desire on the part of the leader to see how far the proceeding will injure his partner can be called a reason—is chronic.

Never[10] lead a singleton unless you are strong enough in trumps to defeat any attempt either of your adversaries or your partner to get them out, in which case it might be as well to lead them yourself; whether you lead a sneaker or wait for others to play the suit, the chance of ruffing is much the same, and the certainty of making a false lead, and the nearly equal certainty of deceiving your partner are avoided.

When a singleton comes off it may be nice, it is certainly naughty; when on the other hand you have killed your partner’s king, and he has afterwards got the lead, drawn the trumps, and returned your suit, should the adversaries make four or five suits in it, you must not be surprised if he gives vent to a few cursory remarks. To succeed with a singleton, (1) your partner must win the first trick in the suit, (2) he must return it at once, (3) on your next opening another unknown suit, he must again win the trick, and the odds against these combined events coming off are something considerable. Per contra, he will probably be beaten on the very first round, and even if he is not, it is extremely likely that he will either lead trumps—unless he is aware of your idiosyncracy, when he will never know what to do—for what he naturally imagines is your strong suit, or open his own; at the same time, just as there are fagots and fagots, so there are singletons and singletons, and a queen or knave is by no means such a villainous card as anything below a seven. “The very worst singleton is the king.”—Cam.

With five trumps and no cards, lead a trump: you have made a true lead, you have led not merely your strongest suit, but a very strong suit, and if your partner has nothing, you will lose the game whatever you play, but you will lose it on that account, and not because you led a trump; if you open any of the plain suits you will make a false lead, and it is two to one that the adversaries hold any of them against your partner. You will often be told by the very people who will tell you to lead from five small cards in a plain suit, that to lead a trump from five is too dangerous, but if you inquire in what way it is too dangerous, and receive any satisfactory reply, you will succeed in doing what I have never done.

With five trumps and other cards, a fortiori lead a trump.

Towards the end of the game, you will find it laid down by some authorities that if you hold nothing and have an original lead, you should lead your best trump; now if that trump is of sufficient size to warn your partner that it is your best, this lead may not, under the circumstances, be much more injurious than any other; but an original trump lead is usually supposed to indicate great strength either in trumps, or in plain suits, and if your partner infers from the size of your trump that your lead is from strength, and acting on that inference returns it, it is about the most murderous lead that can be made; having been two or three times the victim of such a lead is almost as good a reason for not returning trumps as sudden illness or not having one.

If he holds seven tricks in his own hand he can make them at any time, and any attempt of yours, however able, to deceive him at the outset will (to say the least of it) not assist him in doing so.

Why add an additional element of confusion to the game? Why should your partner have to say to himself as well as “Strong cards or strong trumps?” “Perhaps nothing at all.” He is compelled to wait about to see what is the meaning of this lead, time is lost, and an opportunity let slip which may never recur. The Bumblepuppist will here observe that time was made for slaves; but the apophthegms on this subject are more numerous and contradictory than he is aware of.