Whist

For the Russian trick-taking card game, see Russian Whist is played by four players, who play in two partnerwhist.
ships with the partners sitting opposite each other. PlayNot to be confused with Whisht.
ers cut or draw cards to determine partners, with the two
highest playing against the lowest two, who have seating
rights. The players then cut for deal. It is strictly against
Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which
[1][2]
was widely played in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Al- the rules to comment on the cards in any way. One may
not comment upon the hand one was dealt nor about ones
though the rules are extremely simple, there is enormous
good fortune or bad fortune. One may not signal to ones
[3]
scope for scientic play.
partner.

History

2.1 Shuing and dealing

Whist is a descendant of the 16th century game of trump

or ru. Whist replaced the popular variant of trump
known as Ru and Honours.[4][5] The game takes its
name from the 17th Century whist (or wist) meaning
quiet, silent, attentive, which is the root of the modern
wistful.[6]

The cards can be shued by any player, though usually

the player to dealers left. The dealer has the right to shufe last if he wishes. To speed up dealing a second pack
can be shued by the dealers partner during the deal and
then placed to the right ready for the next hand. The cards
are cut by the player on dealers right before dealing. The
dealer deals out all the cards, one at a time, face down, so
that each player has thirteen cards. The nal card, which
belongs to the dealer, is turned face up to indicate which
suit is trumps. The turned-up trump card remains face up
on the table until it is the dealers turn to play to the rst
trick. The deal advances clockwise.

According to Barrington, Whist was rst played on scientic principles by a party of gentlemen who frequented
the Crown Coee House in Bedford Row, London,
around 1728. Edmond Hoyle, suspected to be a member
of this group, began to tutor wealthy young gentlemen in
the game and published A Short Treatise on the Game of
Whist in 1742. It became the standard text and rules for
the game for the next hundred years and led to the game
becoming fashionable.
2.2 Play
In 1862 Henry Jones, writing under the pseudonym
Cavendish, published The Principles of Whist Stated The player to the dealers left leads to the rst trick. He
and Explained, and its Practice Illustrated on an Original may lead any card in his hand. The other players, in
System, by Means of Hands Played Completely Through, clockwise order, each play a card to the trick and must
which became the standard text. Many subsequent edi- follow suit by playing a card of the suit led if they have
tions and enlargements of this work were published using one. A player with no card of the suit led may play any
the simpler title Cavendish On Whist. By this time Whist card, either discarding or trumping. The trick is won by
was governed by elaborate and rigid rules covering the the highest card of the suit led, unless a trump is played,
laws of the game, etiquette and play which took time to in which case the highest trump wins. The winner of the
study and master.
trick leads the next trick.
In the 1890s, a variant known as Bridge Whist became
popular which eventually evolved into Contract Bridge.
The traditional game of Whist survives at social events
called whist drives.[7] There are many modern variants of
Whist played for fun.

Play continues until all thirteen tricks are played, at which

point the score is recorded. If no team has enough points
to win the game, another hand is played.

Part of the skill involved in the game is ones ability to

remember what cards have been played and reason out
what cards remain. Therefore, once each trick is played,
its cards are turned face down and kept in a stack of four
2 Rules
near the player who won the trick. Before the next trick
starts, a player may ask to review the cards from the last
A standard 52-card pack is used. The cards in each suit trick only. Once the lead card is played, however, no prerank from highest to lowest: A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2. viously played cards can be reviewed by anyone.
1

2.3

Scoring

After all tricks have been played, the side which won
more tricks scores 1 point for each trick won in excess of
6. When all four players are experienced, it is unusual for
the score for a single hand to be higher than two. A game
is over when one team reaches a score of ve. There are
so-called Hotel Rules variations where other numbers
are agreed to be played to in advance such as American
and Long, where the games are played to seven and nine
respectively. The Long version is normally combined
with Honours.
In longer variations of the game, those games where the
winning score is not the standard 5 points, honours are
points that are claimed at the end of each hand. Honours
add nothing to the play of a hand. Honours serve only
as an element of luck that speeds up games, and they are
often omitted these days. Serious players disdain honours because it greatly increases the element of chance.
A team that was dealt the top four cards (A,K,Q,J) in the
trump suit collect extra points. A team who holds three
of the four honours between them claim 2 points, a team
who holds all four honours between them claim 4 points.
Tricks are scored before honours. Honours points can
never be used for the last point of a game. Consider the
following example: A game is being played to 9 points.
The score is tied at 6. A hand is played and the winner
of that hand took seven tricks and claimed honours. That
team would receive 1 point for the 7th trick and only 1
point for honours. The score would then be 8 to 6.

2.4

Basic technique

For the opening lead, it is best to lead your strongest

suit, which is usually the longest. A singleton may
also be a good lead, aiming at trumping in that suit,
as ones partner should normally return the suit led.
1st hand: It is usual to lead the king from a sequence
of honours that includes it, including AK (the lead
of an ace therefore denies the king).
2nd hand usually plays low, especially with a single
honour. However, it is often correct to split honours (play the lower of two touching honours) and
to cover a J or 10 when holding Qx and cover a Q
when holding the ace.

LIST OF VARIATIONS

3 Terminology
See also: Glossary of contract bridge terms
Deal: One card at a time is given to each player by the
dealer starting with the player on the dealers left and proceeding clockwise until the deck is fully distributed.
Dealer: The player who deals the cards for a hand.
Deck: Standard playing-card deck consisting of 52 cards
in four suits.
Dummy: In some variations of whist, a hand is turned
face up and is played from by the player seated opposite.
This allows for whist to be played by three players.
Finesse: The play of a lower honour even though holding
a higher one, hoping that the intermediate honour is held
by a player who has already played to the trick. To give
an example: you hold the ace and queen of hearts. Your
right-hand antagonist leads a heart, from which you infer
that he holds the king of the same suit and wishes to draw
the ace, in order to make his king. You however play the
queen, and win the trick; still retaining your ace, ready to
win again when he plays his king.[8]
Game: Reaching a total score agreed beforehand to be
the score played up to.
Grand Slam: The winning, by one team, of all thirteen
tricks in a hand.
Hand: Thirteen tricks. (52 cards in the deck divided by
four players equals thirteen cards per player.)
Honours: In some variations of whist, extra points are
assigned after a game to a team if they were dealt the
ace, king, queen, and jack (knave) of the trump suit.[9]
Lead: The rst card played in a trick.
Pack: See Deck.
Rubber: The best of three games.
Small slam: The winning, by one team, of twelve tricks
in a hand.
Tenace: A suit holding containing the highest and thirdhighest of the suit or (the minor tenace) second- and
fourth-highest.
Trick: Four cards played one each by the players.
Trump: The suit chosen by the last-dealt card that will
beat all other suits regardless of rank. When two cards
are played from the trump suit, the higher card wins the
trick.

4 List of variations

3rd hand usually plays high, though play the lowest The name whist has become attached to a wide variety
of touching honours. The nesse can be a useful of games based on classic whist, but often with some kind
technique, especially in trumps where honours can- of bidding added, for example:
not be trumped if they are not cashed.
Bid whist (a partnership game with bidding, played
Discards are usually low cards of an unwanted suit.
in the USA)
However, when the opponents are drawing trumps a
Blob (a game in which players try to predict the exact
suit preference signal is given by throwing a low card
number of tricks they will take and will be 'blobbed
of ones strongest suit.

3
in' if wrong. Can be played with four or ve players.
Six cards each, total number of tricks bid for in each
hand cannot add up to six. Person to left of dealer
nominates trumps or no trumps and then becomes
dealer for next hand.)
Boston (played in 19th century Europe, favored by
Count Rostov in Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace)
Call-ace whist (in which the bidder chooses his partner by calling an ace; it is the national game of Denmark)
Catch the Ten (also known as Scotch whist) (uses
only half the deck. The 10 is most valuable.)
Colour whist or kleurwiezen (a Belgian game similar
to solo whist, but more elaborate)
Diminishing contract whist (a British variant, combining elements of solo whist, bid whist and knockout whist, players compete individually, not in pairs,
and after each hand has been dealt must name the
number of tricks to take, scoring one point per trick
and a bonus 10 for matching their contract. All 52
cards are dealt for the rst hand, 48 for the second, 44 the next and so until a 13th round with just
one trick. Trumps are pre-dened for each hand
in sequence as: hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades, no
trumps, lose all with no trumps where you lose
10 points per trick taken and some players invariably end up in negative points hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds. The total
number of tricks bid each round cannot match the
number of tricks available, so the dealer each hand
must bid with this constraint in mind sometimes
this constraint is waived for the nal round if players
agree in advance. The winner is the player who has
accumulated the most points at the end of the nal
round.)
Double Sar (also played in south Asia, a variation to
Court Piece in which tricks are only captured when
the same player wins two tricks in succession. The
player then captures all the unclaimed tricks up to
that point.)
Dummy whist (a three-player variant of bid whist)
German whist (a British two-player adaptation of
whist without bidding)

Jass (pronounced Yass) (a Swiss four-player card

game, partners alternatively declare trump)
Knock-out whist, trumps (UK) or diminishing whist
(a game in which a player who wins no trick is eliminated)
Ladder Whist (eectively the opposite of Knock-out
Whist where the you start as a dog and win the game
by achieving a hand of 7 cards)
Minnesota whist (in which there are no trumps, and
hands can be played to win tricks or to lose tricks;
see also the very similar game of Norwegian whist)
Ninja Whist is a whist variation that follows the typical diminishing whist formula but includes the right
and left bowers (Emperor and Samurai respectively)
and a single joker (Shogun) from the deck.
Oh, hell (players bid on exactly how many tricks they
will take; going too high or too low is penalized)
Rikiki (a version of Oh, hell played in Hungary)
Romanian whist (a game in which players try to predict the exact number of tricks they will take; similar
to Oh, Hell)
Serbian whist (a game in which players try to predict
the exact number of tricks they will take, and each
round players are dealt one card less.)
Russian whist is a Russian card-game, similar to
both bridge and whist also referred to as Russian
whist
Shelem (a partnership game with bidding, played in
the Iran)
Siberian Vint a predecessor and more primitive form
of Vint,
Skruuvi is a Finnish variant of Vint, which became
common in Finland while it was a part of Russia
Solo whist (played in Britain; a game where individuals can bid to win ve, nine or thirteen tricks or to
lose every trick)

Hearts (Play of a trick follows whist rules, but the

object is not to take tricks containing certain cards.
Hearts is included in Windows as Hearts (Windows))

Spades (A contract-type game similar to bid whist;

the games name comes from the fact that spades is
always the trump suit).

Hokm, also known as Court piece, Rang or Troefcall

(an originally Persian game)

Tarneeb (played in the Arab world, a game in which

the person who wins the bid picks the trump)

Israeli whist (another game somewhat related to Oh,

Hell, in which one tries to bid the exact number of
tricks one will take)

Three-handed widow whist (or three-handed

whist, an extra hand that is dealt just to the left of
the dealer)

5
Trinidadian Whist (a whist game variation with
some bridge aspects played in Trinidad and Tobago;
the teams are determined by whatever card the winning bidder calls for to be his partner for that round,
there is no dummy and the rst card played by the
winning bidder is trump)
Whos Your Bobby? is a variation in which the Jack
of Diamonds (the Bobby) is trump, though whoever takes the trick with it instantly wins.

4.1

Whist drive

LITERARY REFERENCES

Miss. Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Wickham discuss

Mr. Darcy during a whist party in chapter 16 of
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The game is also
mentioned in her books Manseld Park, Emma, and
Sense and Sensibility.
In Nikolai Gogol's play The Inspector General, a
character Hlestakov lies about playing whist with
a group of inuential ambassadors to look important. It is also prominent in Nikolai Gogol's poema,
"Dead Souls".

A whist drive is a social event at which progressive games

of whist are played.[7]

In the opening chapter of Leo Tolstoy's novella

The Death of Ivan Ilyich the characters contrast the
solemnity of the funeral ceremony with the desire to
escape and play whist.

Whist is played by many characters in Ivan Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons.

Literary references
Barbey d'Aurevilly, in a story from Les diaboliques,
The Underside of the Cards of a Game of Whist,
traces the secret aair between a lady and an expert
whist player, leading to an horric act.
Edgar Allan Poe briey mentioned whist in his tale
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue", alluding to the
analytical mind needed to play:
"[...] Whist has long been noted for its
inuence upon what is termed the calculating
power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, [...]"
Jules Verne uses whist playing to describe Phileas
Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days:
"[...] His only pastime was reading the papers and playing whist. He frequently won at
this quiet game, so very appropriate to his nature;[...]"
Whist also gures extensively in C. S. Forester's
Horatio Hornblower series. Hornblower is featured
as living o his winnings from playing whist while
a half-pay Lieutenant, and famously playing whist
with subordinate ocers before a battle.
The same is true in the Richard Sharpe series by
Bernard Cornwell and was used mainly to portray
gambling much the same way poker is today.
Whist is often enjoyed by Jack Aubrey and Stephen
Maturin whilst at sea in the AubreyMaturin series
of novels by Patrick O'Brian.
In Scarlett, the sequel to Gone with the Wind,
Alexandra Ripley mentions several times that
Scarlett O'Hara is an extremely skillful whist player.

In Middlemarch by George Eliot, the game is referenced numerous times as an aristocratic pursuit
played frequently at the Vincy residence. In particular, the clergyman Mr. Farebrother supplements his
income by playing for money, a pursuit looked down
upon by many of his parishioners.
In his autobiography, Groucho and Me, Groucho
Marx talks about playing whist with an ex-girlfriend
during a chapter on her husbands insomnia.
In The Fiery Cross, Diana Gabaldon describes a
high-stakes whist game between Jamie Fraser, who
was indeed an excellent card player. He also knew
most of the possible ways of cheating at cards. However, whist was dicult, if not impossible to cheat
at., and Phylip Wylie, who had angered Fraser by
making advances to his wife.
In Life of Henry Clay, Carl Schurz notes that his
fondness for card-playing, which, although in his
early years he had given up games of chance, still
led him to squander but too much time upon whist.
In DC Comics Starman series it is revealed that
The Shade is a whist player, and enjoyed playing
with Brian Savage (it was also noted that The Shade
would regularly win at whist, while Savage would
regularly win at poker).
In The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, members of the Falconeri family and the priest
play the game, much to the joy of a Piedmontese
guest, reassured of their civilized ways.
In his autobiography, Harold Bauer: His Book, pianist Harold Bauer laments his inability to play well
under pressure. I suered similarly whenever I
played chess or whist, which excited me so terribly that I always had nightmares from the thought
of how I might have played.

References in music
English musician Robyn Hitchcock mentions whist
in "Eerie Green Storm Lantern" on his 1998 live
double album Storefront Hitchcock:
"[...] By an eerie green storm lantern
Three ghouls were playing whist [...]"
Soggy Bottom Boys "In The Jailhouse Now" mentions whist:
"[...] Bob liked to play his poker, pinochle,
whist, and euchre.[...]"

See also
Bridge
Napoleon
Skat
Solo whist
Tarneeb
Vint

References

[1] Waddingtons Family Card Games, Robert Harbin, Pan

Books Ltd, London, 1972
[2] Courtney, William Prideaux (1894). English whist and
English whist players. London: Richard Bentley & Son.
[3] The Pan Book of Card Games, Hubert Phillips, Pan Books
Ltd, London, 1960
[4] Oxford Dictionary of Card Games, p. 340, David Parlett
ISBN 0-19-869173-4
[5] Pole, William (1895). The Evolution of Whist. Longmans,
Green, and Co. (New York, London), 269 pages.
[6] Wistful - Dene Wistful at Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com. Retrieved 20 January 2015.
[7] Cambridge Dictionaries Online Whist drive
[8] Notes and queries, p. 328 Bell & Daldy 1863
[9] Ocial Rules of Card Games, United States Playing Card
Company, 59th ed., 1973

This article incorporates text from a publication now

in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911).
Encyclopdia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge
University Press.

9 External links
Rules of Card Games: Whist
Whist Counters, Whist Markers
Whist on the Internet Archive (includes a number of
19th century manuals)
A short treatise on the game of whist by Edmond
Hoyle (1743)

10

10
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Whist Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whist?oldid=643340257 Contributors: Wesley, Bryan Derksen, Christian List, Alan Peakall,
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