Hoyle v Foster: whose name should we remember?

Hoyle v Foster : who’s name should we remember? In my article on Hoyle I noted the fact that Hoyle’s name is associated with the rules by which many games are played, particularly card games of various kinds. Most card players, even today, will recognise the name Hoyle even though they are not sure why and probably don’t know that he died as long ago as 1769. This is largely because from the late 18^th century onwards a large number of volumes were published by a wide variety of authors and publishers on both sides of the Atlantic under the name “Hoyle”

Above: Portrait of Edmond Hoyle (1672–1769), whose name became shorthand for authoritative game rules.

because this was seen to be the gold-standard of rule-setting for games. The fact that these volumes had little or nothing to do with Edmond Hoyle himself is largely ignored; the Hoyle brand is everything and is used even today, over 250 years later, to give authority to books on games, and card games in particular.

To be frank, this state of affairs offends my sense of fair play! If anyone deserves to be regarded as the source of standard rules for most card games today it is not Hoyle but Robert Frederick Foster (1853-1945) . Foster more than anyone, before or since, is the person who, throughout his long writing career, codified and clarified the rules and playing methods of most card games in ways and at a level of detail that no-one had even attempted before.

As I have noted elsewhere , there is an irony in the fact that Foster’s own “Handbook to 5 6 the Card Games” published between 1905 and 1907 failed to achieve the recognition 1 I eventually found a picture of Foster. Photograph by Arnold Genthe, 1918, in the Library of Congress, USA. ^[3] 4 Hoyle and his Legacy, ibid.

5R. F. Foster, “Comprehensive Handbook to the Card Games, comprising Instructions for the playing of eighty-nine games”, Simkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., London; Thomas D. Morison, Glasgow.

it was in or before 1907. If it had been published before 1905 it would undoubtedly have been included in Jessel’s comprehensive Bibliography on playing cards and Gaming, 1905.

Above: Title page of R. F. Foster’s Comprehensive Handbook to the Card Games, comprising instructions for 89 games.

Above: The spine of R. F. Foster’s Handbook to the Card Games, covering 89 games.

it deserves. His book is pictured here with a page from his section on solo whist. This method of illustrating the play of a hand was later used in his self-playing cards.7 This handbook was a genuinely new contribution to the writings on games. The publishers preface accurately states that “it is the only entirely original book on games that has appeared for 150 years. Instead of being a compilation of various authors, hastily gathered together in book form and published without regard to completeness or accuracy, and without any of the careful revision needed to bring the various games up to date, this work is that of a single author, who has made the subject of games a lifelong study, and every word in the description of each game is written expressly for this book.”

In this book, Foster acknowledges that “played according to Hoyle” had come to mean “played correctly” or “played according to the standard authorities”. However, he goes on to argue that there is little actual authority for most games. Apart from Whist, Scat and a few others, “we have a very few games left which are not played in different ways in various localities”. The many versions of “Hoyle” then in print, he argues, are either incomplete in their explanations of games or contradictory in specifying the rules and the best ways of playing. This is made worse by the intervention of other commentators: “even poker…is the subject of endless disputes, and decisions which flatly contradict one another are continually given by the editors of the various card columns in the daily press”.

“The purpose of a Hoyle”, he argues, “should be to provide persons with a means of settling all such disputes without referring the matter to a third party, who perhaps know little more than themselves”. There are several “Hoyles” currently in print, he states, that each claim to be the standard authority and yet who disagree on many of the details of law and how games should be best played. He argues that “all the Hoyles that (he) has examined are sadly deficient”. It ought to be possible to refer to a Hoyle “with the same confidence that a dictionary is referred to in disputes on spelling”. He describes some of the “absurd mistakes and contradictions” contained therein even when discussing a game as common as whist, and opines that such obvious errors and inconsistencies undermine confidence in the rest of the work. In addition, “It is a common remark that no person can learn to play backgammon by reading a description of the game in Hoyle. This is not so much because the game is difficult of description, as because no method is followed in describing it.”8 As a crime novel nerd I could not help but notice the similarity between Foster’s insistence on “method” and the constant refrain from Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes that Watson and Scotland Yard detectives would be well advised to follow Holme’s “method” when detecting a crime. Is it too fanciful to see a link? Foster ((1853-1945) and Conan Doyle (1859-1930) were contemporaries, writing at the same time when both Sherlock Holmes and card games were very much part of every day life. But I digress.

In writing his Handbook, Foster is continuing his life mission to address the shortcomings of other contemporary writers on card games. He intends to avoid these common traps and errors and provide a source which readers can trust to be the definitive version of each game described. He follows “the very simple plan of actually playing every game described, and setting down, in the order of their occurrence, the various details which need explanation”. As far as the laws of a game are concerned “when the game has a well-known or official code of laws, the code is given in full; but instead of writing out separate rules for every trifling game (he) has framed a general code of laws for all card games giving the variations under each heading….It is hoped that this general code will be found useful in providing the most trifling games with a set of rules, framed on the same principle as those which govern the more important ones.” Foster not only describes how each game can best be played but adds sections throughout his narrative dealing with how unscrupulous players cheat and how this can be spotted and dealt with.

Above: An illustrative Solo Whist hand from Foster’s handbook, showing his method of explaining play.

Above: Foster’s Complete Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of Indoor Games.

Above: Title page of Foster’s Complete Hoyle, presenting R. F. Foster as author and reviser of the work.

Above: Hoyle’s Games, Autograph Edition, revised and brought up to date by R. F. Foster.

He concludes his Introduction by saying that he “trusts his readers will believe that he has made the best of the imperfect and often contradictory authorities which he has consulted, and hopes that in future editions to avail himself of the suggestions, criticisms, and descriptions of new games or local usages which his readers may be good enough to send him”.

We can see that Foster was frustrated both by the inconsistencies contained in other allegedly “authoritative” texts, by the absence of commonly agreed laws by which many of the games are played, and by the failure of other authors to describe game play in such detail as was necessary to make playing each game possible. In his 1905/7 handbook he attempts to address these deficiencies, and does so at length.

Yet, as far as I can tell, this particular break-through book did not go in to later editions. This is probably because Foster himself had already been responsible for “Foster’s Complete Hoyle . An Encyclopedia of all Indoor games Played at the present day. With suggestions for Good Play, a Full Code of Laws, Illustrative Hands, and a Brief Statement of the Doctrine of Chances as Applied to Games,” published in 1897.

8 As a crime novel nerd I could not help but notice the similarity between Foster’s insistence on “method” and the constant refrain from Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes that Watson and Scotland Yard detectives would be well advised to follow Holme’s method.

9 Published by F.A Stokes, New York and Lawrence and Bullen, London, 1897 According to Jessel, “This is indubitably the most complete book of its kind that has been produced. All the important games are fully treated of, and it contains descriptions of many games of the Continent of Europe, of Asia and of South America. Games of the Whist Family occupy 173 pages, treating of over twenty different varieties”. This particular version of Foster’s Hoyle had no fewer than eight editions between 1897 and 1903.

Above: Title page of Hoyle’s Games, Autograph Edition, revised and brought up to date by R. F. Foster.

After Foster’s Complete Hoyle, he went on to edit and revise the A.L Burt series of “Hoyle’s Games; autographed edition”, This book, first published in1907 was revised and reprinted many times - 1913, 1914, 1926, 1931, 1934, 1940 and beyond - and became the definitive source for many, even today. Successive editions of “Hoyle’s Games” made no acknowledgement to Foster on the front cover, although some versions included his name on the dust jacket and inside as “revised and brought up to date by R.F Foster”. ^[10] and Co., New York and Bombay, 1905 ^[11] Foster continually updated the contents of these editions as games evolved until his death at the end of the Second World War. Most importantly, of course, he was on top of the evolution of whist into bridge throughout these important years. The 1926 edition, for example, has 26 pages on Auction bridge which he acknowledges “has entirely superseded the older game of Bridge”. By 1931 the update describes Modern Auction Bridge but also deals at length with the new kid on the block – Contract Bridge. Later editions focussed primarily on Contract although references to Auction were retained for the benefit of those who continued to play it.

Although his versions of Hoyle overshadowed and greatly outsold his own “Handbook to the Card Games”, and although they both followed his strict principles, they were not the same animal at all. His own book (and his 1897 Hoyle) offers “Suggestions for Good Play” whereas his Hoyles from 1907 do not: “The principal uses of a Hoyle are to look up forgotten rules and to settle disputes which continually arise at the card table, even among players of experience. No attempt is made at suggestions for good play, all such details being out of place in a work of reference like this.”

So here we can see why it is Hoyle’s name which stands as the source of all wisdom on games, when the man behind these later versions published as Hoyle – R. F. Foster – really deserves this title. I guess Foster has only himself to blame by taking on the role of editing and constantly revising a “Hoyle”, but his commitment to rules and clarity greatly enhanced the view that a Hoyle was at last a place to which you could turn to clarify rules and resolve disputes. He didn’t just edit and revise these volumes; he wrote them and presented them in a playable form, revising and updating them as necessary as games evolved. The lack of recognition of R. F. Foster’s major role in this process just offends my sense of justice.

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