Understand the Basics of Whist

Video Transcript

"Strait Whist and Bid Whist, Kitty Whist, both being in the same group of card games, have a structure, that's very similar to that of spades and bridge and pinochle and what have you. Canasta or other card games. You're working with a partnership. That means two sets of players. Playing opposite of each other. For example, if I were playing here, my partner would sit directly opposite of me, that some times is called north and south, and east and west. You'll see those in the bridge columns and so forth. Basically it is two partnerships at the table, competing against each other. So we identify that on a score sheet as "we" and "they". So the importance of the partnerships of course is that you are going to bid together, you're going to work together you're going to try to make your contract. If you declared the suit or no trump, then your objective is to make your contract. Your opponents are going to be doing their darndised to try and beat you and set you by taking the number of tricks to beat your contract. The difference between spades and whist, well in spades, both sides get to declare a number and they are both trying to make their bids. Where as in whist, only one side, just like in bridge, only one side is declaring the contract. So partnership is important, basics of the game are important. You have a trump suit or a no suit, declared as trump, called no trump, high power or low power to wins, we'll get in to that a little bit later."