John Petch Hewby

“ Sometimes I cannot lose a rubber, sometimes I cannot win one; at one time cards will beat their makers, at another the makers will beat the cards, and these results occur without rhyme or reason, in defiance of any system of play. Don’t imagine for a moment that I suggest play is of no consequence, I merely say that you will frequently see the cards or the players run wild, and that the actual result—winning or losing—is beyond your own control. ”

“ If it is any amusement to him—and I presume it is, otherwise he would not do it—from his cradle to his grave to play a game of which he knows absolutely nothing, and if in pursuit of that amusement he thinks it worth his while to take a certain amount of his own and his partner’s capital, and to throw it in the street, why should he lose his temper? ”

“ Don’t finesse against yourself. If you have led from ace, knave, etc., and your partner has made the queen, the king is certainly not on your right. If, on the other hand, you have led from king, and your partner again has made the queen, it can be of no use to put on the king, the ace must be over you. Though Clay described the finesse obligatory before you were thought of, I am afraid that after you are forgotten, these two simple cases will continue to be reversed—that people will finesse against, and not for, themselves. ”

“ The safest plan is, under all circumstances, to discard from your weakest suit; you cannot be cut to pieces there, and, whatever happens, you have the letter of the law on your side. When you have not followed suit to the second round of the opponent’s trumps, when, as a rule, your discard (being forced) is not to be depended on and is of no importance to them, this is the only time they ever see it; for having no winning cards in their own hands to attract their attention, they are able to devote a little more time to seeing the cards on the table. ”

“ When once you cast judgment and common-sense to the four winds of heaven, and submit yourselves body and soul to the rule of thumb—and such a thumb!—you cannot play fast and loose with it; you must take it for “all in all, or not at all.” Like a wife, which you may have some day, you take it for better or worse, till death do you part ”

“ I have lost a bumper in two deals, holding one trump each hand and with the same partner, the same seats, and the same cards won the next rubber but one in two deals, again holding one trump in each hand.
I have seen a player with no trump and no winning card lose a treble, and the very next hand, again with no trump and no winning card—assisted to some extent by his partner—score nine, and on one melancholy occasion my partner and myself were unable to raise a trump between us ”

“ It is even a dangerous practice to signal when the adversaries will most likely have the lead on its completion; they at once adapt their play to the circumstances. I have seen innumerable games of whist not won, and many a game lost, by absurd signalling; still Whist players suffering from Peter on the brain constantly refuse to ruff a winning card in order to disclose a signal in the discard. ”

“ Many feeble whist-players are unwilling ever to let their opponents make a single trick; now this is unnecessarily greedy; under no circumstances, at short whist, is it imperative to make more than eleven. Allow your adversary to have two, it amuses him and does not hurt you.
“It is less mischievous, generally, to lead a certain losing card, than to open a fresh suit in which you are very weak.”—What to Lead, by Cam. ”

“ In all suits of four or more, containing no sequence, unless headed by the ace, you either lead the lowest, or, if you wish particularly to exhibit your knowledge of the game, the lowest but one; but from king, knave, ten, &c., you lead the ten, and if your object is a quiet life, you will continue to do so; if you want to make tricks the advantage of the lead is not so clear: if the second player holds ace, queen, &c., or queen and another, you drive him into playing the queen, and so lose a trick, which if you had led your lowest in the usual way, you might not have done. ”

“ If yelling when he is trodden upon, and crying if he loses, are proofs of humanity, he is essentially human.
Now, no one has the slightest objection to your amusing yourself as long as you do not annoy anybody else. I go further than this, and admit your abstract right to amuse yourself at your partner’s expense, but I protest against your expecting him to rejoice with you in his own discomfiture. ”

“ The advantage of opening a suit in which you hold tenace is not so great as to oblige you to handicap it by sending the town-crier round with a bell to proclaim what that tenace is; late in the hand it is often advisable to lead the knave.
With ace and four small cards and a bad hand, when weak in trumps, I have found, from long experience, the ace to be a losing lead, and being distinctly of the impression that for the ordinary purposes of life, 13/4 = 2, as I am not always anxious to proclaim the exact number of my suit, I generally lead a small one. ”

“ Four people sit down nominally to play whist, when suddenly one of them announces, to the consternation of his partner, that he is not there with any such intention, but solely for his own amusement; he altogether ignores the possibility of the others wishing to play whist for their amusement, and lays down his stale proposition with such an air of originality that he often deludes the unwary bystander into the belief that he is somehow superhuman, and much superior to the other three, who are consequently [43] looked down upon as mean and sordid individuals ”

“ These are noble sentiments! how any sane human being can imagine he has the right to tell me to destroy my hand and do for him—after he has drawn his own teeth—what he was afraid—before that operation—to do for himself, I have never been able to understand.
[38] “When it is evident the winning cards are betwixt you and your adversaries, play an obscure game; but as clear a one as possible if your partner has a good hand.”—Mathews. ”

“ N.B.—When you, second, third, or fourth player have won the first trick, whatever you may think, [15] you are not the original leader, and your lead then should be guided by your own hand; if it is a bad one you are under no compulsion to open a suit at all, one suit is already open, go on with that; if it also is a bad one, one bad suit is a less evil than two bad suits, or opening a doubtful one in the dark; return through strength up to declared weakness, or if it was your partner who led, why should you show a suit unless you hold a good sequence or strong trumps? ”

“ To become a fair whist-player [46] no wonderful attributes are required; common sense, a small amount of knowledge—easily acquired—ordinary observation of facts as they occur, and experience, the result of that observation—not the experience obtained by repeating the same idiotic mistakes year after year—are about all. To save you trouble, the experience of all the best players for the last hundred years has been collected into a series of maxims, which you will find in any whist book. ”

“ The play of the entire hand often depends upon the very first card led, and the confidence your partner has that your lead is correct; whatever then your original lead may be, let it be a true and—as far as you can make it so—a simple lead: never lead an equivocal card—that is one which may denote either strength or weakness—if you can, lead a card about which no mistake is possible. [6] With the original lead, follow the books and lead your strongest suit; if you have nothing at all, do as little mischief as you can ”

“ In bumblepuppy all this is entirely different, you can lead anything you like, in any way you like; here the safest lead is a long weak suit, the longer and weaker it is, the less is your partner able to do you a mischief. With a weak partner, strengthening cards are either futile or dangerous: as he will in all probability at once disembowel himself, the result of leading them is on all fours with the Japanese Hari Kari; whereas if you lead him a small card he will finesse into his boots. ”

“ It is not everybody who is in the proud position which I once occupied, when a trump being led by the adversary, I found myself with no trump, the best nine cards of one suit, and two other aces.
Among good players, then, the forced discard amounts to this: that though you are aware your partner is discarding with the best possible motives, and he is aware that you are doing the same, neither can depend upon the other’s discard as showing anything for certain. ”

“ Are you to dissent and be informed you are always finding fault? (Shakespeare’s retort is neat and worthy of him: “You have always been called a merciful man, partner;” but we are not all Shakespeares.) ”

“ Whenever you hold a suit with one honour in it, to lead that suit, if you can avoid it, is about the worst use you can make of it. Should you fail to see this, devote ten minutes—not when you are playing whist, but on some wet half-holiday or quiet Sunday afternoon—to thinking the matter over; even if you have a suit of king, queen to three, why not be quiet? If anybody else opens the suit you will probably make two tricks, if you open it yourself, probably one ”

“ A whist enthusiast with a greater turn for mathematics than I can lay claim to, has counted from six to seven thousand bacteria on each square centimetre of a playing card, and makes this ghastly deduction: “it is really dreadful to reflect upon the colony of microbes which a person who moistens his thumb before dealing may convey into his mouth, and thence into his system.”—Standard, Nov. 2nd, 1893. “Everything comes to the man who can wait,” and while you are waiting always sit on the dealer’s right. ”

“ In my time I believe Whist has on the whole deteriorated, [58] it mistakes means for ends, is more tricky, more difficult, more cantankerous; with regard to common mistakes—inability to hold a few cards without dropping them on the table, or to play them one at a time; inability to count [106] thirteen, to recollect the best card, or whether it was your opponents, your partner, or yourself who first led a suit; winning your partner’s trick, or not winning your adversary’s; leading out of turn, revoking, and so on—there is not much difference. ”

“ With five trumps and no cards, lead a trump: you have made a true lead, you have led not merely your strongest suit, but a very strong suit, and if your partner has nothing, you will lose the game whatever you play, but you will lose it on that account, and not because you led a trump; if you open any of the plain suits you will make a false lead, and it is two to one that the adversaries hold any of them against your partner. ”

“ For my part I only think it expedient to show five when, with reasonable strength on the part of my partner, I have a fair prospect of bringing in the suit. [14]
It is often better to keep the knowledge of mere [23] length of suit religiously to yourself. Length and strength are not always the same thing; why are giants generally so weak about the knees? Length is often only one element of strength and a very poor one at that, though it may be of use indirectly. With four or five low cards and an observant opponent, it is occasionally a good plan to bottle up the smallest. ”

“ He remembers someone blowing him up for doing something he ought not to have done, and somebody else blowing him up for doing something else, and he is blown up to the end of the chapter. This phase of being blown up is varied by grumbling sometimes aloud, sometimes sotto voce; so that the whist-player is reared on scolding and grumbling as other youngsters are reared on pap. Truly this is a happy life. Some men grumble on principle because it is a national privilege, and they avail themselves of the Englishman’s birthright. ”

“ Don’t ask idiotic questions; if you led an ace, and the two, three, and four are played to the trick, what is the use of asking your partner to draw his card? If you hold all the remaining cards of a suit, why enquire whether he has any?
Don’t talk in the middle of the hand. [49] However you may be tempted to use bad language—and I must admit the temptation is often very great—always recollect that though your Latin grammar [85] says “humanum est irasci,” the antidote grows near the bane, for—at the bottom of the very preceding page—it also says “pi orant taciti.” ”

“ If you have more than two of the suit, don’t play the ace on your partner’s knave; it may be a short suit, or the head of a sequence, and you throw away the power of passing the ten second round, even if it is from king, queen, knave to five, there is nothing to be gained by covering; with ace and another win the trick and return it at once, unless you lead trumps.
Though frequently done, it is not good whist to decline to win a trick, either on the ground that you want a guard for your king of trumps, or because you hold six. In the other game both these proceedings would be correct. ”

“ Honours in weak suits may be freely unguarded by the players who have strong trump hands, but the guards should be religiously preserved by those who are weak. Our discussions resulted in our laying down the following rules for our own guidance, viz., when you see from the fall of the cards that there is no probability of bringing in your own or your partner’s long suit, discard originally from your best protected suit. ”

“ The excitement of the moment has led me into exaggeration here; let me give the bumblepuppist his due, the exact number is ten, as you will find later on.
[23] “The strong hand is leading trumps, and he gets them all out, and has the lead; nine times out of ten he will have forgotten his partner’s first discard, and play on the assumption his last discard is his first, and so certain is this to come about that, we believe, with some players, it is best to endeavour to calculate how many discards we shall get, and let the last discard be our weakest suit.”—Westminster Papers. ”

“ If you see a call and hold the ace and any number of trumps, play the ace—there can be no danger of dropping your partner’s king—and if you had originally more than three, continue with the lowest; but if you are quite sure that leading trumps is the only way to miss or lose the game, don’t lead them at all. ”