I prefer solitaire games with interesting decisions over simple pattern finding games like Klondike, FreeCell, and Spider, so I was excited when I learned about this solitaire Whist game. At the beginning of every hand, you have to decide how many tricks you want to take, my favourite part of any trick-taking game. You can find a few different versions of this game, and this is a version where I adapted a scoring mechanism inspired by Shut The Box.
Setup
Prepare the main deck by selecting the 9s through Kings in four suits from a standard deck, plus the Ace of Diamonds and the Ace of clubs, giving a deck of 22 cards.
Prepare the prediction deck by selecting the Ace through 8 of Hearts. Place the hearts above the playing area with the 8 face down, and the rest fanned face up in order.
Goal
Play eight hands of seven cards, predicting how many tricks you will take each turn. Win the game by paying no more than seven penalty cards in total.
Play
For each hand, shuffle the main deck and deal two hands of seven cards, face down. One is for the dummy, your robot opponent, and one is for you. Then place the remaining cards to the side and flip the top card to choose the trump suit.
Look at your hand, and decide how many tricks you think you can take. If you’ve never played a trick taking game before, read below how the hand is played, then come back to make a prediction. If you have played a trick taking game before, then you just need to know that 9s are the lowest card, and Aces are always trump. When you’re ready to predict, take the card from the prediction deck that matches your prediction, and place it sideways across the rest of the prediction deck. The face down card is a zero, and the Ace is a one. You must choose one of the cards that is left in the prediction deck, so you might not be able to make the exact prediction you wanted. Be careful about leaving the zero and the 7 too late in the game.
Then play the seven tricks in the hand. The dummy leads every trick, so start by playing their top card face up. Then play a card from your hand. If you have any cards of the same suit, then you must play one of them. Aces always count as cards of the trump suit. If you have no cards of the same suit, then you may play any card you want.
If any cards were played that match the suit of the trump turn up, the highest trump card wins the trick. The Ace that matches the colour of the trump suit is the highest trump card in the deck, the other Ace is the second highest trump card, and all the other trump cards are in the regular order with King high and 9 low. If the trump turn up is an Ace, then the only trump card is the other Ace.
If no trump cards were played, the highest card of the first card’s suit wins the trick.
Sweep the tricks into two piles: ones you won, and ones the dummy won.
Continue until you have played all seven tricks, with the dummy always playing the first card.
Scoring
After every hand, count how many tricks you won, and compare it to your prediction. You must pay penalty cards for the difference, whether too high or too low. Shuffle all the cards in the main deck, then deal the penalty cards to a penalty pile, along with the prediction card.
For example, if you predicted three tricks but took five, then you would have to deal two penalty cards to the penalty pile, plus the 3 of hearts that you predicted with.
You may not look at the cards in the penalty pile, the cards under the trump turn up, or the cards in the dummy’s hand before they are played.
Ending the Hand
After paying your penalty, deal out the next hand, as described above. If you don’t have enough cards to deal two hands of seven plus a trump turn up, then you lose.
If you have discarded all eight prediction cards and still have enough cards to deal, you win. As a shortcut, you don’t have to shuffle and deal after the last hand, just count that you have enough cards under the trump turn up to pay your last penalty.
Strategy
You need 15 cards to deal, and you start with a deck of 22. That lets you pay seven penalty cards over eight hands, so you can average just under one penalty per hand.
However, it’s much more common to be able to win two, three, or four tricks than to win zero or seven tricks. It’s a good idea to try and stretch your predictions toward the edges of the prediction range. If you think you could win four or five tricks, predict five or six. If you could win two or three, but you also have lower cards of the same suit to protect your strong cards, consider predicting zero and trying to dump your strong cards on other suits. If you are missing one or more suits, that makes you more flexible to play trump cards or dump your strong cards.
History
The game was designed by Richard Hutnik in 1993. I first read about it in Abstract Games Magazine’s article about trick-taking solitaires, where Karen Deal Robinson mentions it as the inspiration for Gongor Whist. I adapted Gongor Whist’s scoring back to Oneonta Whist, and used the cards themselves instead of writing the score on paper. I also tweaked the top trumps, since not every deck has jokers of different colours.
The game’s name comes from the city where it first became popular, and is pronounced OH-nee-ON-tə.
Bonus: Cribbage Solitaire
One of the other solitaire games that I think has interesting decisions is a Cribbage solitaire that I can’t find described online. I learned it from my family as a child.
The game is played in four rounds, and you build three hands in each round. There is no pegging, you only score the points in your hands.
Building Three Hands
Shuffle the deck, then deal three cards face up with some space between them. Deal another three cards face up, so you now have three hands started with two cards in each hand. Just place them in the order dealt, no choice.
One at a time, turn up a card from the deck and choose which hand to add it to. Once a hand has four cards, you may not add any more cards to it.
Scoring
Once you have three hands of four cards, turn up one more card as the turn up card. Then score the three hands as in Cribbage. The turn up card can be used with each of the hands. If you turn up a Jack, you get two points for his heels.
Sweep the three hands and the turn up card to the side, then start the next round. Do not shuffle the used cards back into the deck, so you could theoretically predict everything for the last round except which card will be the turn up. No looking through the discard pile, though!
Winning
Anything over 90 is a win, below 60 is a skunk.