Solo whist

Solo whist is a trick-taking card game for four players that mixes partnership and every-player-for-themselves play, descended from a Belgian game called Wiezen that had been played in the Low Countries since the early nineteenth century before a Dutch Jewish family introduced it to London in 1852. It is played with a standard fifty-two card deck of French-suited English-pattern cards, with the player to the dealer's left leading the first trick and every player required to follow suit when able. Before play, each hand opens with bidding in which a player may propose to team up with a partner to win eight tricks together, known as prop and cop, or instead bid to play alone against the other three, needing five or more tricks depending on the declared contract; certain high contracts such as misere and misere ouverte dispense with a trump suit entirely, while other contracts use whichever suit the dealer's final card indicates. Scoring rewards or penalizes players according to the bid attempted, ranging from a single point for a successful or failed prop and cop hand up to six points for the highest misere-type contracts.