Whist is the clean ancestor of many modern trick-taking games. There is no auction to memorize, no bonus contract, and no complicated card exchange. Four players split into two partnerships, one suit becomes trump, and each of the thirteen tricks asks the same sharp question: can you follow suit, can you beat the current winner, and should you spend strength now or save it for later?
This free online Whist table keeps that classic rhythm intact. You play South with North as your AI partner while West and East oppose you. The dealer turns the final card of the deal face up to fix trump for the hand, the leader names the suit of each trick, and everyone holding that suit must follow it. A void hand may discard or trump in, the highest trump takes the trick — or the highest led-suit card when no trump appears — and the winner leads next.
The scoring is famously spare, which is exactly what gives it bite. The first six tricks form the book and earn nothing, so only the seventh trick onward counts: one game point per trick over six, to a maximum of seven for a clean sweep of all thirteen. Most hands settle at 7–6 or 8–5, meaning one or two contested tricks in the middle of the hand routinely decide the entire score. This table plays short whist, so the first partnership to accumulate five game points wins the match.
Because every one of the 52 cards is dealt, Whist rewards counting more directly than almost any other trick game. Knowing that two rounds of clubs have stripped the suit, or that the last trump sits in your own hand, converts directly into points — and your AI opponents do the same math, at whichever of the three difficulty settings you choose.
New here? Play a hand first, then dig into the rules guide for deal order, revoke edge cases, and worked examples, or the strategy page for opening leads and trump timing. If you keep score for a live table, the score keeper on this site handles the tricks-minus-six arithmetic with selectable game targets. And if you grew up on Bid Whist — the joker-and-kitty partnership game celebrated across Black American card tables — our Bid Whist guide maps it back to the classic game played here.