Whist family · 2 players
Every card is accounted for. Study your opponent's hand, hide it when you are ready, and turn a good memory into winning tricks.
Both players have 26 cards. You can work out the other hand from your own.
Study both hands. The non-dealer will lead the first trick.
Deal complete
Humbug reduces Whist to a contest between two players. Both can know the initial distribution, so planning and remembering which cards have gone matter as much as the cards themselves.
Use one standard 52-card deck without Jokers. Cards rank A, K, Q, J, 10 down to 2 within each suit. Draw cards to choose the first dealer: the lower rank deals. Shuffle again and deal all the cards alternately, starting with the non-dealer. Each player receives 26 cards.
The last card dealt belongs to the dealer and is turned face up. Its suit is trump for that deal. There is no stock and no exchange of cards. The non-dealer leads the first trick; after that, the winner of each trick leads the next.
Because the two hands contain the whole pack, each player knows that the other holds all the cards missing from their own hand. It is useful to lay the cards out by suit at the beginning. This table shows both hands for study, then hides the opponent's when you start. Select the open-table option first if you prefer to keep both hands visible.
The leader plays any card. The other player must play a card of that suit if they have one. With no card of the led suit, any card may be played; using a trump is optional. The game highlights legal cards and blocks an off-suit play when you can follow.
When both cards are the same suit, the higher card wins. When they are different suits, a trump wins; if neither is trump, the led card wins. Take both cards and keep them face down. The aim is to win tricks, with no separate point values attached to the cards.
Completed tricks may not be inspected, including your own. Players traditionally pick up their hands after studying the layout, turning the deal into a test of memory. The hidden-hand mode has no button for reopening the opponent's hand and no card-by-card history. The current trick remains visible briefly before it is collected.
After all 52 cards have been played, compare the two trick totals. The player with more tricks wins by the difference: 17 tricks against 9 is a win of 8 units. Thirteen tricks each is a draw. Each deal is a separate contest; this page also keeps an optional running balance across deals and alternates the dealer.
Playing off suit while still holding the led suit is a revoke. The historical penalty transfers three tricks from the offender to the other player. Illegal plays are prevented at this digital table, so that penalty does not arise here.
An account of Humbug appeared in the September 1793 issue of The Sporting Magazine, published in London. It presents a remarkably direct way for two players to use a full Whist pack: deal every card, establish trumps from the last card and compete for tricks.
The complete distribution makes Humbug unusually transparent. Once you study the cards, the challenge shifts from discovering hidden information to planning how suits will run out and remembering what remains. A low card can become a winner when higher cards have been used or an opponent can no longer follow its suit.
Keeping both hands laid out emphasises planning, while holding them out of sight adds a memory challenge. Both styles begin from the same known distribution. The open-table option on this page lets you choose that emphasis before a deal starts.
Other two-player Whist adaptations, such as German Whist, retain a drawing stock and reveal information over the course of play. Humbug's fully dealt pack gives it a different character. Historical play treated each deal as a separate event; recording unit totals across a series is a convenient alternative.