Boston (card game)

Boston is an eighteenth-century trick-taking card game played across much of the Western world outside Britain, forming an evolutionary link between the Spanish game Hombre and Solo Whist. It is thought to have been devised in France in the 1770s and was named for the American city because of its association with the American War of Independence, in which France supported the American cause. Played by four players with the full fifty-two card pack, Boston combines the card ranking and trick-taking logic of partnership Whist with a set of solo and alliance bids borrowed from Quadrille. Before play, a bidder pledges to complete a stated task, called an announcement, ranging from winning a set number of tricks alone to forming a temporary alliance with another player against the rest; success wins the pool and counters from the other players, while failure pays them instead. The most widely recorded variant is Boston de Fontainebleau, also called French Boston.