Whist - Whist Terms

Whist Terms

See also: Contract bridge glossary

Deal: One card at a time is given to each player by the dealer starting with the player on the dealer’s left and proceeding clockwise until the deck is fully distributed.
Dealer: The player who deals the cards for a hand.
Deck: Standard playing-card deck consisting of 52 cards in four suits.
Dummy: In some variations of whist, a hand is turned face up and is played from by the player seated opposite. This allows for whist to be played by three players.
Finesse: The play of a lower honour even though holding a higher one, hoping that the intermediate honour is held by a player who has already played to the trick. To give an example: you hold the ace and queen of hearts. Your right-hand antagonist leads a heart, from which you infer that he holds the king of the same suit and wishes to draw the ace, in order to make his king. You however play the queen, and win the trick; still retaining your ace, ready to win again when he plays his king.
Game: Reaching a total score agreed beforehand to be the score played up to.
Grand Slam: The winning, by one team, of all thirteen tricks in a hand.
Hand: Thirteen tricks. (52 cards in the deck divided by four players equals thirteen cards per player.)
Honors: In some variations of whist, extra points are assigned after a game to a team if they were dealt the ace, king, queen, and jack (knave) of the trump suit.
Lead: The first card played in a trick.
Pack: See Deck.
Rubber: The best of three games.
Small slam: The winning, by one team, of twelve tricks in a hand.
Tenace is a suit holding containing the highest and third-highest of the suit or (the "minor tenace") second- and fourth-highest.
Trick: Four cards played one each by the players.
Trump: The suit chosen by the last-dealt card that will beat all other suits regardless of rank. When two cards are played from the trump suit the higher card wins the trick.

Read more about this topic:  Whist

Famous quotes containing the words whist and/or terms:

    [My father] was a lazy man. It was the days of independent incomes, and if you had an independent income you didn’t work. You weren’t expected to. I strongly suspect that my father would not have been particularly good at working anyway. He left our house in Torquay every morning and went to his club. He returned, in a cab, for lunch, and in the afternoon went back to the club, played whist all afternoon, and returned to the house in time to dress for dinner.
    Agatha Christie (1891–1976)

    Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison.
    Bible: New Testament, Matthew 5:25.

    Jesus.