You should also be very particular to lead the lowest but one of five,[15] it creates confusion, and under cover of that confusion you may make a trick or two. From this point of view you will often find the lead of the middle card of your suit extremely effective.
As to play false cards for the purpose of deceiving your partner is considered clever, a very little practice will enable you to play them with facility. With all deference to Bret Harte, for ways that are dark, the Heathen Chinee is not particular, and for tricks that are vain, the Caucasian can give him points.
“For when he’d got himself a name
For fraud and tricks, he spoil’d his game;
And when he chanced to escape, mistook,
For art and subtlety, his luck.”
The ability to play false cards is not a proof of intelligence. (“Cunning is often associated with a low type of intellect.”—Report of Inspector-General of Military Prisons.)[16]
If you read your Natural History, you will find it is the weaker animals which betake themselves to anomalous modes of defence; though the cuttle-fish and the skunk may be much looked up to in their respective domestic circles, they are quite out of place at the whist-table.
It is also usual with ace to five or more trumps to lead the ace, and if you see—by killing your partner’s king, or by his failing to play one—that he has no more, to try something else, for you can change the suit as often as you please. It is a fine mental exercise for your partner to recollect the remaining cards of four unfinished suits, all going simultaneously.