The evening tribune. (Pawtucket, R.I.) 189?-190?, 1896-12-26
FOR LOVERS OF WHIST
Howell Gives His Views on LONG
Suit Openings.
ATTACKS POLE AND CAvENDISn.
Logical Long Suit Leads Value Of Small
Card Lead From Lor;. Suit-What !.
Means to Partner-E ypothetical Hand
and How They Should he Played.


Means to Partner--E ypothetical Hand
and How They Should He Played.
Next to the trumD attack the strongest
form of initiative .t whist Is the long sui'
opening. BY this we mean not tho Pole
Cavendish lead from the longest suit
hand without regard to other strength, but
the lead of small card from good unes-
tablished plain suit, with considerable
trump strength and some protection In the
other suits. The whist player who consid
crs his whole hand and all its possibiliiicS
does MT ,nvaHiably begin with his best
suit He looks at the different elements
of rs holding-bcst suit, trumps, high
carGs i'm short suits, short suits without
high cards--and not at the ono element,
the best suit, alone. II outside Of tho hes.
suit no has little or no strength, he reasons
that tho hand may perhaps be opened i'm
more advan:a geous manner than by the
original lead from the best or longest suit.
Suppose you hold hearts (trump), 8, 2;
clubs, q, z, q, 4, 8; diamonds z, 6, 8, 4;
spades, ~, j. What Is the use of opening
the clubsy You may establish them; but,
even II you do, what theng Let partner
win two rounds with the king and ace,
leaving you with the best one what Is his
noxt playg Unless he has quite extraor-
Ginary trump strength trump lead will
not help you. IL he goes OH with the clubs.
your hand will be dead after the third
round. If he opens another plain suit, he
is mt the mercy Of the adversaries, for you
cannot assist him.
And you may be sure-matbematically
sure-that the odds are far and away
against his having such strength that
your opening Of the clubs can be of any
stratcc.cal bsne.it To your com bined hands
In sucn u case the practitioner of the ad-
vaDoel game resorts 20 the short suit open
ing, which, from the given hand, Is the s
10. In previous article in this series /
havo pointed out some of the virtues of the
short suit opening-the gambit, we call it
land in future articles hope to say mere
on this subject. For the present desire
merely 10 assert as distinctly as Ican that
the logical player, untrammeled by the
Pole -CaveEdish long suit or nothing rule,
does not opon his hand with n small card
from his best suit unless he has such
accompanying strength in other directions
-trumps anti re-entry-that with such as
sistance as partner may probably be able
to render him he may not only establish
his best suit, but may also get trumps out
and "bring in" the suit-that is, make
tricks with the small cards of it.
Let me say by way of perentheses that
by "tbc long suit opening" mean only
the lead of small card from long suit.
The lead OF king from A, X, q and others
10 . long suit opening In q sense, but i
prefer 70 call ~ high card opening. Such
= oom bination yop oan. open without do
pending on partner for anything. The
nNu<~ n vlsh a. - 4
derstood Is q bid or call for partners as
sistance, and its success depends on the
amount of assistance he can give you.
And this suggests the very important
feature of our long suit opening as con-
trasted with the Pole -Cavendish idea-that
the small card lead under our system of
play means something to partner; means
great deal; means: Partner, my hand
Is strong. Back me up fearlessly. Play
forward game. Bend every energy to the
bringing in of my suit. Do not be afraid
to sacrifice your hand for mine. Unless
your hand is much below the average in
strength we havea great score" This Is
the informatory feature Of our logical long
suit opening. Its value cannot be over
estimated.
In whist Openings l defined the
'minimum limit of long suit strength
as Cd plain suit of at least five cards, in
cluding two or more high ones, 10 or bet
ter; (2) either four trumps or two or three
very good ones; CD reasonably sure re-
entry, such as an ace or both king and
queen, In another plain suit. After a
great deal of practice l have found no rea-
son to change those requirements in ma
terial degree. OF course you may weigh
the several elements Of strength together,
and IL one element Is extraordinarily good
it may make up for deficiency in another
direction. Let US take hypothetical long
suit hand and examine IL i'm detail Say
you have hearts (trump), q, 10, ., 2; clubs,
A, j, 3, B, 2; diamonds, TO- spades, X, q,
g. Here are all the requisites for the
long suit game-the excellent plain suit
(clubs), the four card trump suit and the
reasonably sure re-entry in spades. Now,
If the long plain suit were even longer,
say A, j, 8, 8, 8, 2, and the trumps were
only three ssy q, 10, 9, we might still pre-
fer the long suit to the short suit opening,
or, with the same four trnmps, Q, 10, o, 2,
and the Elk clubs, A, j, 8, 8, 8, 2, II the
re-entry suit Is weaker say only X, 6,
instead of X, q, o, we should again be
justified in starting the long suit. But,
on the other hand, II one element Of the
given hand were weaker than II IL without
any compensating advantage, we might
rather open 'short u" For instance, take
one less small club, so that you have A,
j, s, 2, and one more small diamond, 10,
8, the other suits remaining the same, and
you might open with the ID TO- This
ringing the changes on hand 10 a very
instructive exercise for the student There
is no better way indeed of educating the
judgment upon this particular point
when and when not to open a hand with
the best suit. M
append an example of long suit play
from actual practice. 1t occurred In re-
cent match for the vice presidents trophy
Of the New England Whist association
The leaders hand Ia one of those which
we have just been considering West turns
the II g. North leads to the first trick
The winning card I'm each trick Is under
lined, and the card underneath is led next:
North. East. South. West.
Trick i.......".cs' CO CO OF
Trick s....."Hs h a. Hs