Whist
Gambling is called "the English vice" and never was this more true than during the Regency. Regency bucks were known to bet on almost any event with a disputable outcome, including which raindrop would first reach the bottom of the window. But most gambling took place around a green baize table, with cards or dice as the gambling vehicle.
I'll do a series here with explanations of the most popular card games, whist, picquet, and faro.
WHIST is an ancestor of bridge, and ill-deserves its modern reputation as an old-lady's game. During the Regency, all the gentlemen's clubs offered whist games, some for very high stakes. Captain Gronow reports that General Scott, father-in-law of the great politician George Canning, won two hundred thousand pounds playing whist at White's by the simple expedience of staying sober during the games.
Whist requires two teams of two players each. A standard 52-card deck is dealt out, with the last card being turned up in front of the dealer, its suit becomes trump. The player to the left "leads", that is, lays down the first card which dictates the suit of this "trick" or round. The next player to the left (the dealer's partner) attempts to take the trick by playing a higher card of the same suit, or if he hasn't one , a card of the trump suit. The third player does not try to outdo his partner unless he thinks their team will lose otherwise. The dealer then takes up the trump card and plays it, or another card. The team with the highest card of the chosen suit (or the highest trump) wins the trick, which is worth one point. In English whist, a team which has three face cards of trump (an honor) after a bid gets two points (four trump face cards get four points). After all the tricks have been played, the points are added up. The winner gets a combination of tricks and honor points; the loser gets no honor points. A rubber is a match in which one team wins two out of three games. The rubber score of the loser is subtracted from the winner's score to establish the winning margin.
Whist is a game of skill as well as luck, just like bridge. Hoyle, the author of a 19th-century book of cardgames, lists thirty-seven tactics and six calculations (e.g., "The odds are about five to four that your partner holds one card out of any two") to help players build a winning strategy. A good memory and the ability to count cards come in handy here, because you need to know what cards of each suit remain when you play a trick. The fictional sailor Horatio Hornblower uses these skills to beat admirals at high-stakes whist when a lull in the Napoleonic War leaves him without a ship or wages.
Teamwork also influences the outcome; the better you know your partner's game the more likely you will be to lead with the right suit. Perhaps to mitigate this advantage, partners are usually assigned by high-low draw rather than by choice. Cheating is always a possibility with team play, thus the unscrupulous are often suggesting whist games to the unsophisticated in Regency-era novels. One partner might indicate to the other the best card to play by means of finger drumming or blinking.
Next: Piquet