Whist

How to play Whist?

Whist is a trick-taking game. In our game of Whist, there are four players divided into two teams, each with partners sitting opposite of each other.

You (brown monkey) and your computer-bot partner (yellow bird) are one team. The second team consists of the two other computer bots (blue otter and red fox).

Whist consists of several rounds. Each round consists of 13 turns (also called "tricks"). The goal of the game is for each team to win as many tricks as possible. The highest card ranking is Ace and the lowest is 2.

At the beginning of each round, a trump suit is chosen. The chosen trump suit will appear on the board. A trump always beats any card of the non-trump suits. For example: if hearts are the trump suit, 2 of hearts beats the Ace of spades.
Every fifth round there will be no trump suit.

The Play

The player to lead the first trick of the first round is chosen randomly. In the next rounds, the first player to play first rotates clockwise. After the first turn of the round, the winner of a trick leads the next one. On each trick, the leading player plays a card that will be the trick's leading card. In turn, all other players must play a card of the same suit if they have one. If they don't have cards of the same suit, they can play any other card, including trump cards.

At the end of the trick, if any trump cards were played in the trick, the player who played the highest trump card wins the trick. If no player played a trump card, the player who played the highest card of the leading suit wins the trick. The winner leads the next trick.

Scoring

At the end of each round (13 tricks), each trick won after six counts as one point. To score, the team must get more than 6 tricks. The opponent team doesn't gain and doesn't lose any points.
For example, if Team A won 9 tricks and Team B won 4 tricks - Team A will get 3 points (9 - 6 = 3) and Team B will get 0 points.

The first team that reaches 7 points wins the entire game.

Pro tips

• Try to remember which cards were already played and by whom, it may give you clues about the cards left and who has them.
• For example: if a player played an unnecessarily high card it can mean it was their last card of that suit, and they may trump that suit on its next trick.
• If you have no cards of the suit of the leading card, you can play a trump card to take the trick but you also can choose not to.
• There's a high chance that a suit will be trumped on its third round.
• Remember that Whist is a team game. In addition to trying to win tricks yourself, try to understand which cards your partner has and lead cards that will help the team win tricks.
• If your partner is winning a trick let them take it even if you could take it too. There is a chance you will be able to use that winning card of yours to take another trick later in the game.