How to play Whist

Whist is the dignified ancestor of Bridge, Spades and Hearts — a pure, elegant partnership trick-taking game that ruled English card tables for two centuries. There's no bidding and no fuss: you and your partner simply try to win more tricks than the other pair, hand after hand. Here you partner one bot against two others.

Goal

Be the first partnership to 5 game points. You sit across from your partner; the other two players are a team. Points come only from tricks won beyond the first six.

The deal

All 52 cards are dealt, thirteen to each player. The dealer's last card is turned face-up and its suit becomes trump for the hand (the dealer keeps the card). The player to the dealer's left leads the first trick.

Playing & scoring

• Follow the led suit if you can. If you can't, play anything — including a trump.
• The highest trump wins the trick; with no trump played, the highest card of the led suit wins. The winner leads the next.
• The first six tricks a side wins are "the book" and score nothing. Every trick beyond six is 1 point.

So thirteen tricks are shared out, and only the surplus matters: win seven tricks for 1 point, all thirteen for 7. Good whist is about partnership signals and memory — lead your long suit to establish small cards as winners, hold your high trumps to capture the tricks that count, and trust your partner to do the same. First pair to 5 points wins the rubber. N starts a new game.