Each player keeps his score in three columns, one for _plus_ points (headed "WON"), one for _minus_ points (headed "LOST"), and the third for the net total. { 261}
"Upon the revoke being claimed and proved, the hands shall be immediately abandoned. If it is an adversary of the bidder who has revoked, the bidder scores the full amount of his bid, while the side in error scores nothing."
Professor Hoffmann's rule is as follows:--
"If the bidder be the offender, he shall be set back the amount of his bid [_i.e._ the amount shall be scored in his _minus_ column], each of the opponents scoring as usual for any trick or tricks he may have made, including any which, but for the revoke, would have fallen to him.
"If one of the opponents be the offender, the cards of the trick in which the revoke occurred, and of any subsequent trick, shall be taken back by their respective holders, and the hand played anew from that point. The bidder and the opponent not in fault shall each score according to the result of the play, but the offender can score nothing for that hand, and shall further be set back 100 points."
If a player finds that he holds the Joker, two knaves of the same colour, and any two other cards of the same suit as one of the knaves, he has four tricks certain, by declaring the three-suit trumps, unless all the other five trumps be in the same hand. Should he hold two more tricks in the side suits, he will be quite justified in bidding six.
The chances of getting another trump, by taking in the "widow," are an important element in arriving at sound decisions. The odds evidently vary with the number of trumps already held by the player. { 262} The following figures should be carefully borne in mind:
If a player holds four trumps, it is 8 to 5 on his finding one more at least in the "widow."
If he holds five trumps, the odds are only 7 to 6 in favour.
If he has six, he must not reckon on getting another, the odds being 6 to 5 _against_.
HOFFMANN, PROFESSOR.--Five Hundred: the popular American Card Game. Goodall & Son, Ld.
This game is the invention of Professor Hoffmann. It has achieved immediate popularity in circles where it has been experimentally introduced, and it has been thought that it may even be destined to supplant Bridge. Waiving discussion, however, of the question whether Bridge is on the point of immediate deposition from its throne, no impartial person would deny that games could be devised that might run it very close, and bid fair to imperil its popularity. To invent such a game Professor Hoffmann, with his long and close experience of social pastimes of every kind, is exceptionally well qualified; and, whether or no we shall all leave off being Bridge-players and become Quinto-players, there is no denying that in the latter game there are several new and interesting elements, that it carefully avoids the fatal error of excessive complexity--the ruin of "Vint" and "Skat," for instance--and that it is compounded of skill and chance in very happy proportions.