Visiting-Card Marker.
Whatever the apparatus employed, it should be such that every player at the table can distinctly see the state of the score without drawing attention to it.
METHODS OF CHEATING. Whist offers very few opportunities to the card-sharper. When honours are counted, he may be able to keep one on the bottom of the pack until the completion of the deal by making the pass after the cards have been cut. A greek who possessed sufficient skill to do this without detection would be very foolish to waste his talents at the whist table; for, however large the stakes, the percentage in his favour would be very small.
When whist is played with only one pack, a very skillful shuffler may gather the cards without disturbing the tricks, and, by giving them a single intricate shuffle, then drawing the middle of the pack from between the ends and giving another single intricate shuffle, he may occasionally succeed in dealing himself and his partner a very strong hand in trumps, no matter how the cards are cut, so that they are not shuffled again. A hand dealt in this manner is framed on the walls of the Columbus, Ohio, Whist Club; eleven trumps having been dealt to the partner, and the twelfth turned up. In this case the shuffling dexterity was the result of fifteen years’ practice, and was employed simply for amusement, the dealer never betting on any game, and making no concealment of his methods.
SUGGESTIONS FOR GOOD PLAY. Although whist is a game of very simple construction, the immense variety of combinations which it affords renders it very complicated in actual practice; there being probably no game in which there is so much diversity of opinion as to the best play, even with the same cards, and under similar conditions. It has been repeatedly remarked that in all the published hands at whist which have been played in duplicate, or even four times over, with the same cards, no two have been alike.
It would be useless to formulate rules intended to cover every case that might arise, because the conditions are frequently too complicated to allow the average human intellect to select the exact rule which would apply. All that can be done to assist the beginner is to state certain general principles which are well recognised as fundamental, and to leave the rest to experience and practice at the whist table.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES. Nothing obstructs the progress of the beginner so much as his attempts to cover all the ground at once. The more ambitious he is, the greater his necessity for keeping in view the maxim; “One thing at a time: all things in succession.” One must master the scales before he can produce the perfect melody.
The novice should first thoroughly understand the object, and the fundamental principle of the game.
The Object is to win tricks. Not to give information, or to count the hands, or to remember every card played; but simply and only to win tricks.