6. At the end of a hand, consider the importance of placing the lead. For example, you hold the losing, your partner the winning, trump (clubs), and you hold ace, queen, ten of diamonds. Right-hand adversary leads a small diamond, you play your ten, and it wins the trick; there are other diamonds in your partner's hand, the value of which you do not know. Lead your losing trump, and your partner wins this and returns a diamond, and you win all four tricks. If the king of diamonds be to your right, you would lose a trick by playing ace then queen of diamonds. Feeble players, however, would be certain to lead the ace of diamonds, hoping that their partner would trump the queen, and that thus the trumps would make separately. They give up a certainty for a chance, and consider it safe play to do so.
7. Do your best to help your partner, not to play in opposition to him. Thus, if your partner call for trumps, lead him your best if you have less than four, your lowest if you hold four, and your fourth best if you hold more than four—the exception being when you hold the ace, which always lead to your partner's call. Do not refuse to lead a trump to your partner's call merely because there is a chance of your ruffing a suit. This is selfish play, and usually results in a loss, the suit you wish to trump not unusually being your partner's strong suit.
When your partner, by his discard (or otherwise), has declared strength in one suit and weakness in another, lead the best card of the suit in which he
has declared strength. It is a criminal act to lead his weak suit, unless you hold all the winning cards of that suit.
It is towards the end of a hand that bad players display the greatest ingenuity in selecting cards, which, when led or played, can alone lose the game. Also revokes are more commonly committed by a player who holds only two or three cards, than they are when he has in his hand seven or eight cards. Never dash out a card, after you have won a trick, without examining the card that both you and your partner have just previously played.
When you have the game in your hand, play as calmly as though you had a difficult hand to play. Time is rarely, if ever, saved by throwing down your cards. The adversaries examine these deliberately as their only chance, and too often it is found that, had the player played in the usual manner, he must have won the game, but, in consequence of his cards being called, he has just missed winning it.
Books on Whist.
If the reader is ambitious to become a genuine whist-player, the following should be studied—not glanced at and forgotten, but thoroughly mastered—and their principles systematically practised:
A Treatise on Short Whist. By James Clay.
Cavendish on Whist.