Whist Card Game Rules

Whist is the classic English trick-taking card game for four players in two partnerships. Each player gets 13 cards, one suit is trumps, and the side that wins more than six of the 13 tricks scores a point for each extra trick. There is no bidding and the rules are simple, but there is plenty of room for skill. It was the great card game of the 18th and 19th centuries before Bridge replaced it, and it is still played in Britain at whist drives. This guide covers the whist card game rules, scoring and honours, strategy, the popular versions (Bid Whist, Knockout Whist and German Whist) and the odds.

Whist Rules at a Glance

Partners and the Deal

Four players form two partnerships, with partners facing each other across the table, and play goes clockwise. The cards in each suit rank A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2.

1. Shuffle and cut. The player to the dealer’s left shuffles and the player to the dealer’s right cuts.
2. Deal all 52 cards one at a time, so everyone has 13.
3. Turn up the last card. It belongs to the dealer, and its suit is trumps for the hand. It stays face up until the dealer plays to the first trick.

Players traditionally use two decks: while one is dealt, the dealer’s partner shuffles the other, ready for the next dealer on the left.

How to Play Whist

• The player to the dealer’s left leads any card to the first trick.
• Follow suit if you can. Each player in turn plays a card of the suit led. If you have none, you may play a trump or throw away any other card.
• Winning the trick: the highest trump wins; if there are no trumps in it, the highest card of the suit led wins.
• The winner leads next. Play continues until all 13 tricks are played.

Scoring and Winning

The first six tricks a side takes (its “book”) score nothing. The side that wins the majority scores 1 point for each trick over six, called an odd trick: winning 9 tricks scores 3. Keep playing hands until one side reaches the target:

Honours

In the traditional game, the honours are the ace, king, queen and jack of trumps. A side whose players held all four between them scores 4 points; a side that held three scores 2. They are claimed at the end of the hand. A side already on 4 points cannot score honours, and tricks are scored before honours, so a side that makes its odd tricks wins a close race to game. Many players today leave honours out, since they add an element of luck: as the odds below show, one side holds three or four honours in most deals.

Whist Drives

A whist drive is a local whist tournament, the way whist is still most often played in Britain. Instead of turning up the last card, trumps follow a fixed order: hearts for the first hand, then diamonds, spades and clubs, and round again; some drives add a hand with no trumps every fifth deal. Because every table should play the same number of hands, a drive plays a fixed number of deals rather than games, and each player’s score is the total of odd tricks their side made.

Whist Strategy Tips

• Play as a partnership. There is no bidding, so the only way to tell your partner about your hand is through the cards you play. Watch every card your partner plays.
• Lead from your strongest suit, usually your longest, on the first lead.
• Use the signals players expect. Leading an ace and then the king of the same suit traditionally shows you had only those two; king then ace shows you have lower cards in the suit too.
• Count the cards. Keep track of which high cards and trumps have gone, so you know where the rest are by the last few tricks.
• Finesse. Holding the ace and queen when an opponent on your right leads the suit, playing the queen can win the trick while keeping your ace, if the king sits with that opponent.

Bid Whist

Bid Whist is a partnership game with bidding, especially popular among African Americans. It uses the 52-card deck plus two jokers, a big joker and a little joker: 54 cards. Tricks are called books.

1. Deal 12 cards each, one at a time, and six face down to the table as the kitty.
2. Bid once each, starting left of the dealer. A bid is a number from 3 to 7, the books over six your side will win, plus uptown (high cards win), downtown (low cards win) or no trump. Each bid must be higher than the last; no trump beats the same number uptown or downtown. If the first three pass, the dealer must bid.
3. The winner names trumps (or, in no trump, uptown or downtown), takes the kitty and discards six cards, which count as the bidding side’s first book. The bidder leads.
4. Play as in whist: follow suit if you can. With a trump suit the big and little joker are the two highest trumps. Downtown, the ace stays high and the rest run 2, 3, 4 up to the king.

A bid of 7, promising all 13 books, is a Boston. Many groups have house rules: a minimum bid of 4, a downtown bid outranking an uptown bid of the same number, or a 52-card game with no jokers and a four-card kitty played to 21.

Knockout Whist

Knockout Whist is the version many families simply call whist, and a good way to teach children trick-taking. Two to seven players each play for themselves.

• First hand: seven cards each; turn up the next card for trumps.
• Each hand after that is dealt one card fewer, down to a single card each, and the player who took the most tricks chooses trumps.
• Anyone who takes no tricks is knocked out. The last player left, or anyone who takes every trick in a hand, wins.
• Popular extras: a dog’s life, where the first player knocked out gets one card in the next hand and one last chance to win a trick with it.

German Whist

German Whist is a two-player version, and despite the name it appears to be British. Each player gets 13 cards; the rest form a stock with the top card face up, and that card’s suit is trumps. For the first 13 tricks the winner takes the face-up stock card and the loser the face-down one beneath it. When the stock is empty, the last 13 tricks are played out, and only those count: whoever wins most of them wins the hand. So in the first half, only try to win a trick if the face-up card is worth having.

Other Whist Games

Whist vs Bridge

Bridge grew out of whist and replaced it in clubs in the 1890s. The trick-taking is the same: 13 cards each, partners opposite, follow suit, trumps win. The difference is bidding. In whist trumps are set by the turned-up card and there is no auction, so you learn about your partner’s hand only from the cards played. In bridge, an auction decides the trump suit and how many tricks a side must win, and one hand is laid face up on the table as the dummy.

Whist Odds

These are exact probabilities for a classic whist deal, checked against 200,000 randomly dealt hands:

• Trumps in your hand: a player other than the dealer most often gets 3 trumps (29% of hands) and averages 3.1; the dealer, who always has the turned-up card, averages 3.8. No trumps at all happens in 1.7% of hands.
• Honours: one side holds three or four of the four honours in 61% of deals (all four: 11%); they split two each only 39% of the time. The turned-up card tilts it: the dealer’s side scores honours in 35% of deals, the other side in 26%.
• Voids: your 13 cards include no cards at all in some suit 5.1% of the time.
• Bid Whist: the six-card kitty holds at least one joker 21% of the time.

Where Whist Comes From

Whist grew out of the 17th-century English game Ruff and Honours and had replaced it by the 18th century. Its name comes from an old word whist, meaning quiet or attentive, the root of the modern wistful. Gentlemen played it seriously at the Crown Coffee House in London around 1728, and Edmond Hoyle’s A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist (1742) became the standard rules for a century. In the early 1890s Bridge took its place in the clubs, but whist lived on as a social game and at whist drives.

More Trick-Taking Games

For a partnership game with bidding, try Spades; to predict your tricks exactly, play Oh Hell. Hearts turns the idea round, and Pinochle and Briscola score the cards you win.

A faster partnership game: Euchre, five cards each and the two jacks of the trump colour as the top trumps.

Whist: frequently asked questions