German whist

German whist is a plain-trick card game for exactly two players, played with a standard fifty-two card French deck, with its rules first recorded in Britain in 1894 though the game is said to have become fashionable earlier among diplomats in Vienna. Each player is dealt thirteen cards from the shuffled deck, and the twenty-seventh card turned up from the remaining stock sets the trump suit for the hand. Play unfolds in two distinct stages: through the first thirteen tricks, players draw replacement cards from the talon after each trick, with the trick's winner taking the visible upturned card and the loser taking the next hidden card from the stock, so the composition of both hands is steadily reshaped through the stage; once the drawing stock is exhausted, the final thirteen tricks are played out with no further replacement. Only the second stage counts toward the result, and whichever player wins the greater number of these final tricks wins the game, typically scored by the margin between the two players' trick totals.