“There is many a man walking the embankment at night because they didn’t play trumps” is one of those aphorisms frequently quoted in this context. The quotation is old, much older than the game of bridge itself – it originated in the days of whist in the eighteenth century. What this hoary old advice fails to note is that just as many men walked the embankment at night precisely because they DID play trumps. Whist, of course, has no dummy hand so it was often very difficult to know what to do on any given deal. By the time the distribution of the cards became evident it was usually three tricks too late to do anything about it. That is one of the reasons that serious whist died as a game and became superseded by bridge.