THE ELEVEN RULE (by desire).
——
“Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger
My tale had been longer.”

This lecture, though quite irrelevant, is given to gratify the curiosity of many youthful enquirers.

The eleven rule (which only applies to American leads) is simply this: that, if under favourable circumstances, you add certain integers together and the result should be eleven, then you shall see what you shall see. (It can scarcely be called a novelty, for it seems to have been well known to Virgil,
“Magnus ab integro s?clorum nascitur ordo.”)

Bearing this cardinal fact firmly in mind, supposing a deuce is led—and it is ex rei necessitate a fourth best; this is the favourable circumstance just referred to—then, if you hold nine higher cards of the suit, you add nine to the pips on the deuce, and if you add it correctly and it comes to eleven, you play the lowest of your superior cards, and (with the proviso the suit is trumps) win the trick.

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Though it is scarcely an epoch-making discovery,[29] still it is true, and that in these days of the new journalism is something to be thankful for.

There is one example of this rule in the “Field” which is to me a source of perennial joy.

The second player who holds the ace, the king, the queen, the knave, and the eight of hearts, to his own enquiry which card he ought to play on the six led, replies, “I say the eight!”

Now, though certainly 6 + 5 = 11, and the rule—as I have already admitted—is true, this play does not commend itself to my intelligence, and I should advise you not to trouble your youthful brains about the later rounds of a plain suit—when the leader, to your own certain knowledge, has from four to eight, and you yourself follow holding five, including a qu............