Whist FAQ

Whist is a classic trick-taking card game for four players in two fixed partnerships, played with a standard 52-card deck. Each player gets 13 cards, one suit is trump, and partners try to win more than six of the 13 tricks each hand. It is the ancestor of contract bridge and a close relative of spades and hearts-style trick games.

Yes. whistgame.app is completely free and runs entirely in your browser. There is nothing to buy, download, or install, and there are no premium tiers or paywalls. Press Play and a hand is dealt.

No. The game is the website — a 100% browser-based build with no app store download and no sign-up. Your stats are saved locally in your browser, so there is no login to manage.

Four players sit as two partnerships — you and North against West and East. Deal 13 cards to everyone; the dealer's last card is turned up and its suit is trump. The player left of the dealer leads a card, and the others must follow suit if they can. The highest trump wins the trick, or the highest card of the led suit if no trump was played, and the winner leads next. After 13 tricks, a side scores one point for every trick over six. First to 7 points wins.

By the dealer's last card. Cards are dealt one at a time around the table and the dealer receives the final card of the deck. That card is turned face up and its suit is trump for the hand. Because the dealer changes every hand, trump changes too.

Yes. If you hold any card of the suit that was led, you must play one. Only a player with none of that suit may play any card, trump included. The game enforces this for you — cards you cannot legally play are dimmed.

Each hand has 13 tricks. A partnership's first six tricks — the book — score nothing, and every trick beyond six is worth one point. So 7 tricks score 1 point, 8 tricks score 2, and all 13 tricks score 7. Only one partnership can score in a hand, and with six tricks each nobody does. The first partnership to reach 7 points wins the game.

Two game lengths are common. The traditional British game was played to 5 points but also scored honours; the American game is played to 7 points from tricks alone. This version uses the 7-point American target with no honours, which is also what most online whist games use, and it gives games a fair length of several hands.

Yes. In standard whist there is no restriction on leading trump — unlike some trick-taking games where trump must be "broken" first. You may lead any card in your hand at the start of a trick.

Lead from your longest suit, cash Aces and Kings before they can be trumped, keep count of trumps as they fall, and play low when your partner is already winning the trick. Memory matters most: once you know which high cards are gone, your lower cards become winners. The tips page covers each of these in detail.

They follow fixed heuristics rather than looking at your cards. They lead guaranteed winners first, then their longest side suit, win tricks with the cheapest card that does the job, support their partner without overtaking, and trump when they are void and it wins. They track cards already played but never see your hand or their partner's.

Whist has no bidding: trump is decided by the dealer's last card and every hand is played out for the book of six. Contract bridge grew out of whist by adding an auction and a declarer; spades fixes trump as spades and adds bids. Whist is the simplest of the three, which is why it is such a good introduction to partnership trick-taking.

The deal is random, so some hands are stronger than others — but over a game of several hands the better card player wins far more often. Counting cards, leading well, and cooperating with your partner is where the skill is.

Yes. The layout is designed for portrait phones: the table, your fanned hand, and the toolbar all fit on one screen. Tap a card to lift it, and tap it again to play. It also works on tablets and desktop browsers with the keyboard.

Yes, on your device. Games won, win rate, streaks, hands won, best winning margin, and your sound preference are stored in your browser's local storage. Nothing is sent to a server, so clearing site data or switching browsers starts fresh.

A streak counts consecutive game wins. Losing a game resets it, and so does starting a new game before the current one is finished — an abandoned game is recorded as a loss. Finish the game, or reset progress from the stats panel to start a clean record.

Not at the moment. This is a single-player build: you play with a computer partner against two computer opponents. Everything runs client-side, so games start instantly.