THE ORIGINAL LEAD OF THE LONGEST SUIT:—This, according to all accounts,
is the essence of modern Whist, and if not too much modern it is
certainly modern enough; for take any fossil you please, again
including Cavendish on Whist,—you must keep in mind the doubtful
personality of the three Cavendishes—and you will find no such lead;
that it is generally advisable to lead from your strongest suit, a
dogma old as the everlasting hills, is quite another matter.
All authority is dead against the strongest, and _a fortiori_ against
the longest suit, _always_ being led.
In the Westminster Papers for February and March, 1878, the point was
thoroughly ventilated; it is not my intention to quote the articles in
extenso, I have given you chapter and verse, and if you are anxious to
master the subject, you can either read it for yourself, or consult the
originals.
The editor shows that Hoyle, Paine, Major A., Mathews, Clay, and
Cavendish on Whist, all teach that, though the strong suit should
_generally_ be led, the lead depends upon the hand and the score. He
points out that “Mathews recognizes the fact, which we all deplore,
that we must in the nature of things, have bad hands or peculiar hands,
such that the ordinary lead must be departed from;” that Hoyle, giving
directions how to play for an odd trick, says, “Suppose you are elder
hand, and that you have ace, king and three small trumps, with four
small cards of another suit, three small cards of a third suit, and one
small card of a fourth suit, how are you to play? You are to lead the
single card.” That Major A.—whom Clay describes as likely to be very
formidable among the best players of the present day—goes so far as to
say, “with a bad hand, do _not_ lead from three or four small cards.”
So much for the books! His conclusion from observation is “In watching
good players, we find them averse to leading from their long suit
unless they have sufficient trumps or other cards of re-entry to
enable them to establish that suit. So also with the score advanced;
no one dreams of trying to bring in the long suit.” According to
the play that we see, with great weakness the rule is rather to lead
strengthening cards. For our own part we should be inclined to say,
“Lead from your strong suit only when you are sufficiently strong to
bring in that suit with the aid of reasonable strength on the part
of your partner.” “The supposed orthodox lead is absurd.” My own
opportunities for observation have been considerable, and I say “ditto
to Mr. Burke.” In the teeth of this, we have Cavendish in _The Field_,
and Dr. Pole, the great twin brethren again, affirming not only that
the strongest suit should always be led, and that the strongest suit is
the longest, but that “this system has stood the test of the experience
of a century and a half.”
The open, erect and manly foe,
Firm we may meet, perchance return the blow.
The three tailors of Tooley Street might have chanted in unison,
Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas,
with impunity, if they had only given their correct names and address.
It was because they attempted to pose as the people of England, with a
large P, that the laugh came in.
In the same way Brown, Jones and Robinson, collectively or
individually, have an undoubted right to depose Clay from his pedestal,
and substitute wood as a better material for our idol; but they have no
right to palm it off on the worshippers as the real Simon Pure.
I should like an answer to this simple question; if the longest suit is
always to be led, how is it that every Whist book, without exception,
gives minute directions for leading short suits?
Another red herring trailed across the scent is that a four suit is a
normal suit, and that being normal it must always be led. In the first
place it is the strong suit, not the long suit, which is the normal
lead; in the second place, what is ‘normal’ by no means invariably
takes place, otherwise why does ‘abnormal’ still remain in our
dictionaries?
When you hold a bad hand, it is just as philosophical to acquaint your
partner with that unpleasant circumstance by leading a strengthening
card, as it is to lead a long weak suit and leave him floundering about
in ignorance of everything but its length, and it has a much greater
weight of authority at the back of it.
Pondering where the Dioscuri got hold of such extraordinary notions, it
flashed across my memory that in childhood’s happy hour, I had read in
Lemprière, that though they spent half their time with the immortals,
they passed the remainder “in another place;” hence these tears!