THE PLAY OF THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH HAND.
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“The play is the thing.”—Shakespeare.
Second hand with king and another, or queen and another, never play the honour either in trumps or plain suits, unless you particularly want the lead, and then you will probably not get it, and throw away a trick.
By not playing the honour,
(1) The chance of trick-making in the suit is greater (this has been proved to demonstration by Mogul).[17]
(2) The possible weakness of the third hand is exposed—a very important point.
[27]
(3) Your own weakness is concealed from the leader, and he is able to finesse against your partner; these three reasons ought to be tolerably conclusive, but if a high card is led, head it!
If, holding knave, ten, and another, you are afraid of trumps being led, and your partner is devoid of common sense, don’t play the ten, or it will be taken for a signal (that it neither is one, nor at all like one, does not affect the petrolater in the least); it is almost equally dangerous with queen, knave, and another to play the knave. A high card second hand has exactly the same effect on many players as a red rag has on a bull; and if you have an objection to being gored, you should keep it out of their sight as long as possible—subject to this important qualification—“Put an honour on an honour, with only three of a suit; with four or more you should not do it.”—Mathews.
Except to save or win the game, whether you are weak in trumps, or strong, don’t ruff a doubtful card unless you have a distinct idea what to do next; if you are only going to open a weak suit, let it go.
Don’t ruff a suit of which your partner clearly holds the best, in order to announce, urbi et orbi, that you are weak in trumps; depend upon it urbis and orbis will take advantage of this, not to mention that you take the lead out of your partner’s hand at[28] a critical moment, and prevent him from developing any game that he may have.
“Why for the momentary trick be perdurably fined?”—Shakespeare.
In bumblepuppy, with ace, king, and others, or king, queen, and others, the trick is often passed, and with knave led, if the second player holds ace, queen, etc., he usually plays the queen;[18] holding the same cards, if instead of the knave a small card is led, he occasionally produces the ace. These proceedings may be the eccentricities of genius; if they are not, the only other explanation I can suggest for them, is a desire to lose a trick.
Third hand.—Don’t finesse against your partner, unless you have reason to believe you are stronger[29] in his own suit than he is, or that he has led from weakness.
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. In bumblepuppy this is de rigueur; also at this game, with king, queen, and another in your partner’s lead, it is customary to play the king, and, if it wins, to open a new suit.
Ruff a winning card of the adversaries! What possible benefit can you derive from allowing your opponent to discard, and by that discard show his partner the suit he wishes led? If you are too stingy to use a high trump, surely you might play a little one just to keep the trick going. “It is much better to play a small trump with the certainty it will be overtrumped than to let the trick go.”—Westminster Papers.
When your partner has opened a suit with the ace, and on the third round eleven are out, he holds the other two, and whenever he leads one of them—whether it is the queen or the four—it is a winning[30] card; but if you fail to grasp this, and feel disposed to play the thirteenth trump on it, don’t waste time either in invoking the immortal gods, inspecting the last trick, or looking pr?ternaturally intelligent—trump it at once, and put him out of his misery. The idea is not new, for it occurred to Macbeth when about to perpetrate the very same coup:
“If ’twere done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly.”
My only claim is to have expressed myself without such an involved use of auxiliary verbs.
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.
Fourth hand.—Win the trick, and endeavour, if possible, to do so without playing a false card. Like all things that are difficult at first, you will find it become comparatively easy by practice. You might suppose that the exponent of bumblepuppy—who always considers a trick of his own making worth at[31] least two made by his partner—would get into no difficulty here; but he does. He has a firmly-rooted belief that his strong suits are under the protection of a special Providence which will never allow them to be ruffed, and uttering his wretched shibboleth, “Part with my ace, sir? never!” he contrives to lose any number of tricks by keeping up his winning cards to the last possible moment and a shade longer. I imagine he is under the erroneous impression that this in some way compensates for cutting in with a small trump when he is not wanted.
“It is a good plan when you have the thirteenth trump to pass winning cards. The reason of this is not apparent, but in practice I know several players who do so, and in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom.”—Westminster Papers.