IN case the _ipse dixit_ of Cavendish in _The Field_, or “the preface,”
should fail to convince, we have also had the sacred name of Philosophy
dragged in to countenance these proceedings.
Ever since there has been any record of philosophers, their schools
appear to have been about as numerous as themselves. Plato for his
own share had five different sets of followers. All the systems
contradicted each other, and the disciples of each master usually held
different views as to his tenets; as this has continued down to our own
day, for the dogmatic philosopher who recently died in Chelsea spent
more than half a century in contradicting himself, while two of the
most prominent disciples of Comte are fighting tooth and nail at this
very moment, when we hear of _the_ philosophy of Whist, the enquiry
naturally arises, which philosophy? The Whist philosophy of Cam,
propounded day by day, was, that there is no absolute never or always.
The same idea runs through the entire treatise of Clay; and if there is
one point more especially distinctive than another in the teaching of
that great master, repeated again and again, and constantly insisted
upon, it is that all the maxims of Whist are open to innumerable
exceptions, that the coat must be cut according to the cloth, and that
he is the finest Whist-player who can most readily grasp that fact.
(Here I may remark, in a parenthesis, that though the late Mr. Clay
eventually gave a qualified assent to the penultimate lead and the
forced discard, it has yet to be shown that he assented to either the
one or the other, in its present uncompromising and preposterous form,
a form which is utterly repugnant to his every public utterance).
This is considerably opposed to the fearful and wonderful philosophy
of Dr. Pole, the basis of which appears to be that it is always
imperative to lead your longest suit, which he naively admits to be a
losing game. It is unfortunate that his lines are drawn in a commercial
age, for if he had only lived in the time of Don Quixote he might have
taken high rank.
To ignore the teaching of a long line of illustrious dead, to set
precedent at defiance, and deliberately to go out of your way in order
to lose, is an extension of the old stoical principle, “under all
circumstances to keep your temper,” in the very best latter-day manner;
but reasonably doubtful as to the success of such an appeal if left to
stand upon its own bottom, he invokes elementary algebra to his aid.
Now elementary algebra is not devoid of good points; by its means we
learn that a man may—either in time or in eternity—hold 635,013,559,600
different whist-hands. Moreover, every hand, he will have an entirely
different purpose; sometimes to win the game; sometimes to save it, and
with that end in view, will lay himself out to make tricks varying
from three to eleven—below and above that number, since the invention
of short Whist, he has no need to trouble himself—and the moral most
people would draw, would be that in that portentous number of hands,
some of them would require very different treatment from others; the
philosopher of Whist, however, thinks not, but would fit all those six
hundred and thirty-five thousand odd millions of hands into the same
Procrustes’ bed, and would always lead the longest suit. Again, Whist
is an art; if in any sense a science, it is certainly not an exact
science, and the application of algebra to art is somewhat limited.
There are far too many unknown quantities in the equation.
Take our old friend king and another in the second hand; Permutations
and Combinations will inform us sooner or later—I should imagine later,
for to my certain knowledge, a series of four thousand two hundred and
nineteen is not enough—as to the number of times we shall make it or
lose it, whether we play it, or do not play it; but they will give us
no clue as to the extent of damage we may receive when it is played
and taken by the third hand, or as to the loss we incur when the ace
is in the fourth hand, by importing uncertainty into the game. When we
do not put it on and lose it, we may—or may not—lose one trick; when
we put it on and lose it, we may lose any number. The whole system of
the newly suggested play of the first and second hand is undermined
by the fundamentally false assumption that the lead is always from a
long suit; that everybody, irrespective of the score, has merely to
ascertain which is his longest suit, and then to take immediate steps
to put the table in possession of its exact length is so transparently
simple, that such extreme simplicity in a game of skill is enough of
itself to arouse the gravest suspicion.
Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam,
Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit.
Just to see how the plan worked, six consecutive times have I with king
and two others—using my best judgment as to the lead—passed the queen
led, and six times have I lost a trick; this may show that my judgment
was bad; but it shows, with much more absolute certainty, that the
lead, in those six cases, was not from numerical strength.
If the lead always were, it needs no demonstration to prove that the
holder of the king has seldom anything to gain by heading the trick;
that might be granted without the slightest demur; only how about the
combination game? If the fourth player has to play the ace on the
queen led, where is the king? certainly, not according to our present
knowledge, in the second hand with one or two of the suit.
As to not heading the queen with king and another, one of the latest
Cavendish coups, it is really so puerile, he must be practising upon
our credulity; the veriest bumble-puppist that ever crawled upon this
earth is too well aware that, every now and again, a trick may be made
by the most absurd and outrageous play—or rather want of play—otherwise
the breed would have been as extinct as the dodo.
There are positions enough, where the king is the only card of re-entry
and where, unless the fourth hand can get in with the ace and draw the
trumps, the game is over, but it is not so here; the coup succeeds,
simply and solely, because, by a most improbable chance, the fourth
hand holds one, while the second player holds two of the suit. Genuine,
unadulterated bumble-puppy! Whenever I am induced to propound a system
of Whist philosophy, enlivened with texts from the Gospel according to
Cocker (_absit omen_), its fundamental principle will be that four in
thirteen goes twice.
If I with king and another head the queen and make it, and have nothing
else to do, I can return the suit, ruff the third round and make three
consecutive tricks; not a bad thing in these hard times when the rental
of our estates is constantly diminishing, and the income tax has gone
up another penny.
Now suppose I pass it and my partner makes the ace, he must open a
new suit. We have had a surfeit of statistics lately, still, if the
gentleman at present in possession of the calculating machine of the
late Mr. Babbage would kindly turn the handle, and let me know how many
tricks on the average are lost by merely opening a suit, I should be
much obliged to him. When the leader and his partner either hold the
whole of it, or nothing at all, it may be done with impunity, but under
ordinary circumstances it usually entails a loss of one trick and often
two.
I have considered at some length the original lead of the longest suit,
and the lead of the penultimate, because on these two commandments hang
all the latter-day law, but not the profits: for on the strength—for
want of a more appropriate word—of these figments, at this very moment
our guide is attacking the recognised play of the third hand, our
philosopher is suggesting an entirely new set of proceedings for the
second hand, while both guide and philosopher are doing their level
best to assist our friend in New York to bouleverse the leads.