If the second player has no card of that suit, he or she may play any card. In this case the higher card wins the trick.

The first player plays any card and the second player must play a card of the same suit if possible. Each trick consists of two cards, one played by each player. The players look at their cards, and since they know that the opponent has all the other cards, there is no harm in laying all one's cards face up on the table, organised into suits, for a better overview.

The suit of this card, which belongs to the dealer, is the trump suit for the hand. The dealer shuffles again, the non-dealer cuts, and the dealer deals all the cards one at a time, turning the last card face up. The dealer is chosen by drawing cards from the shuffled deck: the player who draws the lower card is the dealer. This game is for two players, using a standard Anglo-American 52-card pack. Probably that is why card players came to prefer other two-player adaptations such as German Whist in which the players do not begin with complete information. Since both players know each other's cards at the outset, the experience is more like a puzzle and a test of memory than a normal card game. An account published in London in the September 1793 edition of The Sporting Magazine was drawn to my attention by Ivan Derzhanski - here is the original. This 18th century game is about the simplest two-player adaptation of Whist that can be imagined.

Two player whist card game