Whist

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For the Russian trick-taking card game, see Russian whist.

Not to be confused with Whisht.

Whist

A Whist marker by the English cardmaker
Charles Goodall by the end of the 19th century.

Origin

England

Type

Trick-taking

Players

4

Skills required

Tactics, strategy

Cards

52

Deck

French

Play

Clockwise

Card rank (highest to lowest)

A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Playing time

30 min

Random chance

Medium

Related games

Auction bridge, Contract bridge,
Wendellhead, Solo whist, Tarneeb

Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which was played
widely in the 18th and 19th centuries.[1]
It derives from the 16th century game of Trump or Ruff, via Ruff and Honours.[2][3]
Although the rules are extremely simple, there is enormous scope for scientific
play.[4]

Contents

1 History

2 Whist rules

2.1 Shuffling and
dealing

2.2 Play

2.3 Scoring

2.4 Basic whist
technique

3 Whist terms

4 List of
variations

4.1 Whist
drive

5 Literary
references

6 References in
music

7 See also

8 References

9 External
links

[edit]
History

Apparently originating in the early 17th century, the now obsolete adjective
whist and variant spelling wist (in which the word wistful
has its roots), meant quiet, silent, and/or attentive. The
adverb wistly is also defined as meaning intently.[5]

In its heyday a large amount of literature about how to play whist was
written. Edmond Hoyle,
of "According to Hoyle" fame, wrote an early popular and definitive textbook,
A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist. It is important to note that this
game, called "French ruff" by Charles Cotton, is similar to écarté. English
ruff-and-honours, also described by Cotton, is similar to whist. If we admit
that ruff and trump are convertible terms, of which there is scarcely a doubt,
the game of trump was the precursor of whist. A purely English origin may,
therefore, be claimed for trump (not la triomphe). No record is known to exist
of the invention of this game, nor of the mode of its growth into
ruff-and-honours, and finally into whist.

Early in the 18th century whist was not a fashionable game. The Hon. Daines
Harrington (Archaeologia, vol. viii.) says it was the game of the servants'
hall. Contemporary writers refer to it in a disparaging way, as being only fit
for hunting men and country squires, and not for fine ladies or people of
quality. According to Barrington, whist was first played on scientific
principles by a party of gentlemen who frequented the Crown Coffee House in
Bedford Row, London, about 1728. They laid down the following rules: "Lead from
the strong suit; study your partner's hand; and attend to the score." Shortly
afterwards the celebrated Edmond Hoyle (q.v.) published his Short Treatise
(1742). It has been surmised by some that Hoyle belonged to the Crown Coffee
House party. This, however, is only a conjecture. There is abundant evidence to
show that, in the middle of the 18th century, whist was regularly played at the
coffee houses of London and in fashionable society. From the time of Hoyle the
game continued to increase in public estimation, until the introduction of
bridge, which has to a large extent replaced it, but which has much in common
with it.

By the late 19th century an elaborate and rigid set of rules detailing the
laws of the game, its etiquette and the techniques of play, had been developed
that took a large amount of study to master. In the early 20th century, bridge, which shares
many traits with whist, displaced it as the most popular card game amongst many
card players. William Henry Seward, Secretary of State for Abraham Lincoln, was
famous for his enjoyment of whist, often entertaining guests with the game.
Today, whist has largely fallen out of favor in America, though it is still
somewhat popular among African Americans. Nevertheless, whist continues to be
played in Britain, often in local tournaments called a "whist drive".[6]

[edit]
Whist rules

A standard 52 card pack is used. The cards in each suit rank from highest to
lowest: A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2. Whist is played by four players, who play in
two partnerships with the partners sitting opposite each other. Players 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 the rules to comment on the cards in any way. One may not
comment upon the hand one was dealt nor about one's good fortune or bad fortune.
One may not signal to one's partner.

[edit]
Shuffling and
dealing

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

[edit]
Play

The player to the dealer's left leads to the first trick. He may lead any
card in his hand. The other players, in clockwise order, each play a card to the
trick and must follow suit by playing a card of the suit led if they have one. A
player with no card of the suit led may play any card, either discarding or
trumping. The trick is won by the highest card of the suit led, unless a trump
is played, in which case the highest trump wins. The winner of the trick leads
the next trick.

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 one's 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 near
the player who won the trick. Before the next trick starts, a player may ask to
review the cards from the last trick only. Once the lead card is played,
however, no previously played cards can be reviewed by anyone.

[edit]
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 five. There are so-called "Hotel Rules"
variations where other numbers are agreed to be played to in advance. Popular
variations are "American" and "Long", where the games are played to seven and
nine respectively. The "Long" version is normally combined with "Honors."

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.

[edit]
Basic whist
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 one's 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.

3rd hand usually plays high, though play the lowest of touching honours.
The finesse can be a useful
technique, especially in trumps where honours cannot be trumped if they are
not cashed.

Discards are usually low cards of an unwanted suit. However, when the
opponents are drawing
trumps a suit preference signal is given by throwing a low card of one's
strongest suit.

[edit]
Whist terms

See also: Contract bridge
glossary

Deal: One card at a time is given to each player by the dealer
starting with the player on the dealer’s 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.[7]
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.)
Honors: 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.[8]
Lead:
The first 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 is a suit holding containing the
highest and third-highest 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.

[edit]
List of variations

Nowadays there are many other games called whist - the name has become
attached to a wide variety of games based on classic whist, but often with some
kind of bidding added, for example:

Bid whist (a
partnership game with bidding, played in the USA, and made popular by the US
Military)

Blob (a game in which
players try to predict the exact number of tricks they will take and will be
'blobbed in' if wrong. Can be played with 4 or 5 players. 6 cards each, total
number of tricks bid for in each hand cannot add up to 6. 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. 10 is most
valuable.)

Colour whist or Kleurwiezen
(a Belgian game similar to solo whist, but more
elaborate)

Double
Sir / Double Trumps (also played in south Asia, an interesting variation
to Rang, 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)

Hearts (Play of a
trick follows whist rules, but the object is not to take tricks. Hearts
is included in Windows as Hearts
(Windows))

Hokm (played in Iran. The name means "To
Rule".)

Israeli whist
(another game somewhat related to Oh Hell, in which one tries to
bid the exact number of tricks one will take)

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)

Minnesota whist
(in which there are no trumps, and hands can be played to win tricks or to
lose tricks - also the very similar game of Norwegian whist)

Oh Hell (players bid on
exactly how many tricks they will take; going too high or too low is
penalized)

Romanian whist
(a game in which players try to predict the exact number of tricks they will
take - similar to Oh Hell)

Russian whist
is a Russian card-game, similar to both bridge and whist also referred to as
Vint

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.)

Siberian Vint a
redecessor and more primitive form of Vint,

Skruuvi
is a Finnish variant of Vint,
and it became common in Finland while it was a part of Russia

Solo whist (played in
Britain; a game where individuals can bid to win 5, 9 or 13 tricks or to lose
every trick)

Spades (A contract-type
game similar to bid whist, popular in North America; the game's name comes
from the fact that spades is always the trump suit).

Tarneeb (played in the
Arab world, a game in which the person who wins the bid picks the trump)

Three-handed "widow"
whist (or three-handed whist, an extra hand that is dealt just to the left
of the dealer)

Vint is a Russian
card-game, similar to both bridge and whist and it is sometimes referred to as
Russian whist

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 first card
played by the winning bidder is trump)

[edit]
Whist drive

A whist drive is a social event, popular in Britain, at which progressive
games of whist are played.[6]

[edit]
Literary references

This article is in a list format that may be better
presented using prose. You can help by
converting this article to prose, if appropriate.
Editing help is
available. (February 2011)

The lists in
this article may contain items that are not notable, not
encyclopedic, or
not helpful. Please help out by removing such elements and incorporating
appropriate items into the main body of the article. (February
2011)

Barbey
d'Aurevilly, in a story from Les
diaboliques, The Underside of the Cards of a Game of Whist, traces
the secret affair between a lady and an expert whist player, leading to an
horrific act.

Edgar Allan Poe
briefly 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 influence 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 figures extensively in C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower
series. Hornblower is featured as living off his winnings from playing whist
while a half-pay Lieutenant, and famously
playing whist with subordinate officers 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 Aubrey–Maturin
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.

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 Mansfield 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 influential ambassadors to look important. It is also prominent in Nikolai Gogol's poema,
"Dead Souls".

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.

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 difficult, 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.”

[edit]
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
[...]"

[edit]
See also

Wikisource has the text
of the 1911
Encyclopædia Britannica article whist.

Solo whist

Bridge

Skat

Vint

Nap

Tarneeb

[edit]
References

^ Waddingtons
Family Card Games, Robert Harbin, Pan Books Ltd, London, 1972

^ Oxford
Dictionary of Card Games, p. 340, David Parlett ISBN
0-19-869173-4

^ Pole, William (1895).
The Evolution of Whist. Longmans, Green, and Co. (New York, London),
269 pages.

^ The Pan Book of
Card Games, Hubert Phillips, Pan Books Ltd, London, 1960

^ "Whist" word origin

^ a
b
Cambridge Dictionaries Online Whist drive

^ Notes and
queries, p. 328 - Bell & Daldy 1863

^ Official 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). Encyclopædia
Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press.

[edit]
External links

Look up whist
in Wiktionary, the
free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Whist

Bid Whist for Windows: Whist

Rules of Card Games: Whist

Whist Counters, Whist Markers

v ·
d ·
eList
of trick-taking games

card

304 · 3-5-8 · 400 · 500 · All
Fours · Ambition · Bacon · Baloot · Barbu · Bashi
Fen · Belote · Bezique · Bid
Whist · Black
Lady · Bluke · Boston · Botifarra · Bourré · Bridge · Cắt
Tê · Clabber · Clag · Doppelkopf · Écarté · Escoba · Euchre (game
variations · terminology
variations) · Forty-fives · Gong Zhu · Hearts · Hokm · Jabberwocky · Jass · Julepe · Kaiser · Klaverjas · Königrufen · Krutzjass · Make-A-Million · Manille · Mariáš · Marjapussi · Marjolet · Mighty · Napoleon · Nines · Ninety-nine · Oh
Hell · Pedro · Pinochle · Piquet · Pitch · Preferans · Put · Rams · Renfield · Rook · Ruff and
Honours · Schafkopf · Scopa · Sedma · Sheepshead · Shelem · Sixty-six · Sixty-three · Skat · Spades · Spoil
Five · Sueca · Tarabish · Tarneeb · Tarot
card games (Tarocchini) · Thunee · Tichu · Tremp · Troccas · Truco · Tute · Twenty-eight · Ulti · Wendellhead · Whist · Wizard

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