A trick game

If you are not familiar with trick games, this page is for you. Not only will this prepare you for the detailed rules, it will also give you simplified rules to start playing and improve your knowledge while playing. Start with v0.1 below to learn by playing. By the end of this page you're level 0.5 and you will already have passed some nice play time.

Dealing the cards

Put 4 players around a table and take a deck of 52 cards. One player starts dealing the cards around, starting with the player clockwise (on his left). The cards are dealt face down in packs of 4 for 2 dealing rounds and packs of 5 for the third round. After dealing each player will therefore end up with 4+4+5=13 cards.

After the game play phase, which is described below, the next dealer will be the player clockwise of the current dealer, and so on.

Playing basic whist v0.1: a trick game

The player to the left of the dealer kicks of the play phase by choosing one of his cards to put on the table (f.e. the 10 of hearts). He leads hearts. Then clockwise, each other player, one after the other, throws one of their cards, provided that they have to "follow suit" if they can. This means that for the given example each player has to also put a heart on the table (unless they don't have any heart, in which case any other card can be thrown). The 4 cards on the table make up one trick. The player that threw the highest card of the suit that started the trick (here hearts) wins the trick. He puts the 4 cards in a pack face down in front of him, and decides which card starts the following trick. This continues until 13 tricks are played and each player can count how many tricks (s)he made. The player with the most tricks wins. Write down the score for each player, say 1 point per trick for now, and keep playing to see who makes the largest total.

Tip: Do not underestimate the value of practicing this basic version. Investigate how the number of cards you have in a specific suit often plays a role in the outcome.

Up it one, learn to play together (v0.2): teams

Playing together is more fun. For this step in your path to divinity (ahem), add the rule that two teams are to be formed each game. Decide which pair of players is teamed up and rotate the teams, f.e., game:

team p1+2 vs team p3+4
team p1+3 vs team p2+4.
team p1+p4 vs team p2+p3

Play exactly like in the previous version, but now score each player with the number of tricks that his/her team made.

Tip: One useful playing convention is that the first suit that you lead is one where you hope to make more tricks. This way, when your partner makes a trick later on in the game, he has inspiration what suit you would like to be led. Also, keep an eye out for signals from your opponents... the game is on.

Putting some colour in the whist (v0.3): trump

Again one additional rule for this third phase so you level up to basic whist. You're progressing quite fast, easy does it. In this version, each game will have one of the four suits being designated as trump. The 13 trump suit cards defeat any of the cards of the other 3 suits. The easiest way to decide on the trump suit for a game is by showing the last dealt card to everyone: The suit of that card will be the trump suit. The novelty for this version is that during play, if (and only if) a player cannot follow suit for a trick, he can throw a card of the trump suit, which "buys" the trick for that player. Note that if other players also cannot follow suit in that same trick, they are allowed (not obliged) to throw a higher trump suit card if they have one, and buy out the trick for his team.

Tip: A common convention for players with a hand with many trump cards (>=5) is that, when they can lead, they lead a card in the trump suit, to remove some trump cards from the opposing team. However, do this sparingly: you're also removing trump cards from your partner's hand.

Seek a trump partner (v0.4): bidding (ask and join)

Standard whist has a bidding phase in between dealing and playing. It goes like this:

After dealing and declaring the trump suit, the player clockwise from the dealer makes one of the following statements (bids) out loud:

pass (bad cards)
ask (good cards)

This good/bad appreciation is fully up to the player's discretion, but typically asking implies 4 or more trump suit cards and some high cards (Ace, King, ...) in any of the 4 suits.

The next players can in turn also make their bid. The only difference for those subsequent bidders is that, as soon as a player "asked", the others will now say either pass or "join" (iso ask). Joining decides the team (asker + joiner) and ends the bidding phase.

The team will now play the contract being the challenge to make 8 tricks or more in order to score positively.

Special bid outcomes are detailed further below.

Seeking but not finding (v0.4): special bid outcomes

In the bidding phase, we just saw that typically we have a player asking and another joining, after which bidding is stopped.

Two special situations can occur:

All four players passed. This is just a no-game, the cards are dealt again and the next bidding is started.
One of the players asked, but no other player joined. In that case, the player that asked can bid a second time: either pass (no-game) or play alone. In the case of playing alone, he will face a team of 3 players playing against him. To make this achievable, the minimum number of tricks for a contract by 1 player is not 8 tricks but rather 5.

Getting the score right (v0.5): you're scoring like a whist boss now

In the previous version we introduced the contract notion. Here we detail the scoring for a contract. Rather than just counting the tricks, a zero-sum score is awarded:

For a team playing a contract, the succesful completion of 8 tricks in the playing phase is worth 2 points for each player. For each overtrick (trick above 8), an additional point is awarded. F.e. if the contract team made 11 tricks (3 overtricks), they will get 2 + 3x1 = 5 points (each of the 2 players). The counterplayers (other team) will get -5 points each: You could consider this as if each player of the losing team pays 5 points to one of the players of the winning team. The total score for all players for a game is therefore zero.

For a one-player team playing a contract of 5 tricks, the scores are similar if you look at it from the perspecive of the counterplayers. Suppose the contract player made 6 tricks (one overtrick), he will receive 2 + 1x1 = 3 points from each of the counterplayers. This means -3 for each counterplayer, and +9 (!) for the contract player.

Conversely, if the contract was not made, the contract players will lose points: 3 points for the first trick down and one additional point for each additional undertrick. Say f.e. that a 2-player team made 6 tricks (iso the 8 of the contract) then they will each lose -3 + 1x(-1) = -4 points. For a 1-player contract the reasoning is similar but more expensive, since he'll have to pay the loss 3 times (to each other player).

You've made it: you're a standard whist player now.

More (exceptional) bids are possible in standard whist, but those exist as well in Colour Whist and will be explained in the nuts & bolts page. It makes more sense now to step into the realm of Colour Whist on the upcoming "Rules" page.

Nevertheless, please do get fully comfortable with playing whist v0.5 before juming there. It will make the further journey easily accessible.