TWO-HANDED HEARTS. Before opening the hand, the player should carefully consider what suits are safe and what are dangerous. It is usually best to preserve the safe suits and to lead the dangerous ones, which you should clear your hand of, if possible. It is a great advantage to have a missing suit, and equally disadvantageous to have a number of a suit of which your adversary is probably clear. If a card of a missing suit is drawn, it is usually best to lead it at once, so as to keep the suit clear; but in so doing, be careful first to place the card among the others in the hand, or your adversary will detect that it is a missing suit.
The lead is a disadvantage if you have safe hearts; but toward the end of the stock, from which cards are drawn, it is an advantage to have commanding cards, with which you can assume the lead if necessary.
There is some finesse in determining whether or not to change the suit often in the leads. If you have a better memory than your adversary, it may be well to change often; but if not, it may assist you to keep at one suit until afraid to lead it again.
In Two-Handed Hearts, keeping count of the cards is the most important matter, because the real play comes after the stock is exhausted, and the moment that occurs you should know every card in your adversary’s hand. The exact number of each suit should be a certainty, if not the exact rank of the cards. Until you can depend on yourself for this, you are not a good player. The last thirteen tricks are usually a problem in double-dummy; but the advantage will always be found to be with the player who has carefully prepared himself for the final struggle by preserving certain safe suits, and getting rid of those in which it became evident that his adversary had the small and safe cards.
Some very pretty positions arise in the end game, it being often possible to foresee that four or five tricks must be played in a certain manner in order to ensure the lead being properly placed at the end, so that the odd hearts may be avoided.
AUCTION HEARTS. The cards having been cut and dealt, the player to the left of the dealer, whom we shall call A, examines his hand, and determines which suit he would prefer to play to get clear of. Let us suppose his hand to consist of the ♡ A K 8; ♣ J 6 5 4 3 2; ♢ K 4; and the ♠ 7 3. If the suit remains hearts, he is almost certain to take in a number; but if it is changed to clubs, he is almost as certain of getting clear. The hand is not absolutely safe, as hearts might be led two or three times before the clubs in the other hands were exhausted by the original leader, whose game would be to lead small clubs. As the pool will contain thirteen counters to a certainty, he can afford to bid in proportion to his chances of winning it for the privilege of making clubs the suit to be avoided, instead of hearts.
It might be assumed, if the odds were 10 to 1 that the player would get clear if the suit were clubs, that therefore he could afford to bid ten times the amount of the pool, or 130, for his chance. Theoretically this is correct, but if he should lose one such pool, he would have to win ten others to get back his bid alone, to say nothing of the amounts he would lose by paying his share in pools won by others. Let us suppose him to win his share, one-fourth of all the pools. While he is winning the ten pools necessary to repair his single loss, he has to stand his share of the losses in the thirty others, which would average about 128 counters. This must show us that even if a player has a 10 to 1 chance in his favour, he must calculate not only on losing that chance once in eleven times, but must make provision for the amounts he will lose in other pools. Experience shows that a bid of 25 would be about the amount a good player would make on such a hand as we are considering, if the pool were not a Jack, and he had first say.
The next player, Y, now examines his hand. Let us suppose that he finds ♡ 6 4 3; ♣ A K 10; ♢ 8 7 5 3; ♠ 6 5 4. If the first bidder is offering on clubs, it is evident that he will lead them, as the successful bidder has the original lead in Auction Hearts; and it is equally evident that if he does so, a player with A K 10 will have to pay for most of the pool. If any of the other suits is the one bid on, B has as good a chance for the pool as any one, at least to divide it. With two men still to bid, a good player would probably make himself safe by shutting out A’s bid, probably offering 26.
Let us suppose B then to examine his hand, finding ♡ J 10; ♣ Q 9 8 7; ♢ A 10 9; ♠ 10 9 8 2. Being unsafe in everything, he passes, and practically submits to his fate, his only hope being that the pool will result in a Jack. Z then examines his hand, finding ♡ Q 9 7 5 2; ♣ none; ♢ Q J 6 2; ♠ A K Q J. He sees at once that on spades he would lose everything, and on diamonds he would have a very poor chance. On clubs the result would depend on how often spades were led. In hearts, he has a very good hand, especially as he has a missing suit to discard in. As he is the last bidder he can make sure of the choice for 27, which he bids, and pays into the pool. The result of the play is given in Illustrative Hand No. 4. (As the cards happen to lie, had A been the successful bidder and made it clubs, Z would have won the pool.)