[23] “The strong hand is leading trumps, and he gets them all out, and has the lead; nine times out of ten he will have forgotten his partner’s first discard, and play on the assumption his last discard is his first, and so certain is this to come about that, we believe, with some players, it is best to endeavour to calculate how many discards we shall get, and let the last discard be our weakest suit.”—Westminster Papers.
[24] If they were slightly to vary this statement, and say, “They pitched thirteen cards about only for their own amusement,” the position would be much more inexpugnable.
Unless my memory deceives me, in “The Whist Player,” by Col. Blyth, they are recommended to confine themselves to playing “Beggar my Neighbour” with their grandmothers;—as most of those ladies must in the ordinary course of nature have gone over to the majority, this would be hard on them—but they might adopt a middle course, and play that fascinating game with each other; they could pitch the cards about equally well, and would have more cards to pitch. I shall resume this topic at the close of this lecture.
[25] Will he?
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”
And you can hope anything you like, if you don’t mind the subsequent disappointment: First, he has to see it, and after you have got over that difficulty, if he only holds two small cards in that suit, and has a tenace in the other—according to my experience—he will lead his own. With king singly guarded in your suit, instead of being delighted to play it, wild horses are powerless to drag it from him.
[26] Absorbed in their discoveries, they appear to have forgotten that, “Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona.”
“If weak in trumps, keep guard on your adversary’s suits. If strong, throw away from them.”—Mathews.
[27] That young and curly period when I was influenced by the fashions has passed away. Eheu fugaces, etc. It may be easier to remember “strong” than “best protected”; one epithet is certainly three syllables shorter than the other, but it seems a pity, for the sake of those three syllables, to use an expression which is utterly misleading.
In “The Art of Practical Whist” also “strongest” is used without any qualification whatever, and here you only save two syllables; although the Commination Service is seldom read now—even if, like Royal Oak Day and Herr Von Joel, it should cease altogether to be retained by the Establishment—to make the blind man go out of his way would still be inexpedient, unless you make him go out of your own way as well, for you may cut him for a partner; if you have no respect for the blind, surely you have some regard for your pocket-money.