The Evolution of Bid Whist, by Ronald L. Allen, is a guide to a classic American card game and an exploration of its roots, how it has changed and how it connects to American history.
Bid Whist probably originated among enslaved African Americans in the nineteenth century, and it has endured and adapted along with the country. In Allen's telling, the game travelled with African American soldiers through every American war since the Civil War, and survived the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement and everything since.
What is Bid Whist?
Bid Whist is a four-player partnership trick-taking game descended from whist, the same family that produced contract bridge. It involves competitive bidding and scoring and demands the concentration and strategic thinking associated with bridge. There are several variants, and players in the Northeast may play slightly differently from those in the South.
Preserving the game's roots
With the internet, the game has gained fans around the world. Allen welcomes its growing popularity, but he is keenly aware of the need to preserve its history and to protect it from the kind of appropriation many forms of African American culture have experienced. He spent years researching despite scarce written records, and the detective work shows: interviews with former Pullman porters in their late eighties and nineties, reconstructions of related games, personal diaries and surveys of players. The result is a comprehensive history that follows African Americans from slavery through the Great Migration and the Civil Rights era.
Much more than a book about a game
It is unusual to call a book about a card game a tour de force, but this one earns it. Allen's scholarship and passion are obvious, yet he never lets the book get bogged down in technical detail. Instead he invites the reader to join him in solving a mystery: where did Bid Whist come from, how is it tied to Black culture, and how has it changed as its communities changed?
Cards, stakes and American history
Reading Allen also reminds you how much American history happened around card tables. Whist itself was codified in 1742 by Edmond Hoyle, whose rulebooks gave us the phrase "according to Hoyle." Poker grew up in the early nineteenth century around New Orleans and on Mississippi riverboats, and spread west with soldiers and miners. Bid Whist was usually played for pride rather than money, but it belongs to the same tradition of card rooms, kitchen tables and barracks where strategy, nerve and reading your opponents mattered more than luck. If that tradition fascinates you, our Casino Novels section follows the gambling side of it through literature, from Dostoevsky's roulette to the best poker books ever written.
About the author
Ron Allen is the retired founder of an insurance agency in Chicago. A graduate of Chicago State University, he taught business education in the Chicago Public Schools before joining Allstate in 1967 as one of its first African American claims adjusters. He has been active in the NAACP and in local diversity initiatives, and has co-hosted a finance programme on Chicago radio.
