Robert Frederick Foster
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Robert Frederick Foster
Robert Frederick Foster (May 31, 1853 – December 25, 1945) of New York City, known as R. F. Foster, was a memory training promoter and the prolific writer of more than 50 nonfiction books. He wrote primarily on the rules of play and methods for successful play of card, dice, and board games. Alan Truscott wrote 20 years after his death that Foster "had been one of the great figures in whist and bridge" for 60 years. Biography R. F. Foster was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 31, 1853, the son of Alexander Frederick and Mary E. Macbrair, and "connected with some of the best families in Great Britain". He was educated as an architect and civil engineer. He emigrated to the United States (probably in 1872) where he engaged in surveying and gold prospecting and then in manufacturing before turning to the memory training and writing businesses in 1893. Foster married Mary E. Johnson in 1891 and became card editor for the ''New York Sun'' in 1895. He filled that position to 1919 ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ...
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Euchre
Euchre or eucre () is a trick-taking card game commonly played in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, and the United States. It is played with a deck of 24, 28, or 32 standard playing cards. Normally there are four players, two on each team, although there are variations for two to nine players. Euchre emerged in the United States in the early 19th century and, while there several theories for its origin, the most likely is that it derives from an old Alsatian game called Jucker. Euchre was subsequently responsible for introducing the joker into the modern deck of cards, first appearing in Euchre packs in the 1850s. Origins and popularity ''Eucre'' is briefly mentioned as early as 1810 by Piomingo, a Chickasaw chief, being played in a gaming house alongside all fours, loo, cribbage and whist. In 1829, ''uker'' was being played with ''bowers'' on a steamboat in the American Mid-West. However, the earliest rules do not appear until 1844. The mode of play and te ...
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Glossary Of Contract Bridge Terms
These terms are used in contract bridge, using duplicate or rubber scoring. Some of them are also used in whist, bid whist, the obsolete game auction bridge, and other trick-taking games. This glossary supplements the Glossary of card game terms. : ''In the following entries,'' boldface links ''are external to the glossary and'' plain links ''reference other glossary entries.'' 0–9 ;: A mnemonic for the original (Roman) response structure to the Roman Key Card Blackwood convention. It represents "3 or 0" and "1 or 4", meaning that the lowest step response (5) to the 4NT key card asking bid shows responder has three or zero keycards and the next step (5) shows one or four. ;: A mnemonic for a variant response structure to the Roman Key Card Blackwood convention. It represents "1 or 4" and "3 or 0", meaning that the lowest step response (5) to the 4NT key card asking bid shows responder has one or four keycards and the next step (5) shows three or zero. ;1RF: One round forc ...
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Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and millions of books. In addition to its archiving function, the Archive is an activist organization, advocating a free and open Internet. , the Internet Archive holds over 35 million books and texts, 8.5 million movies, videos and TV shows, 894 thousand software programs, 14 million audio files, 4.4 million images, 2.4 million TV clips, 241 thousand concerts, and over 734 billion web pages in the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive allows the public to upload and download digital material to its data cluster, but the bulk of its data is collected automatically by its web crawlers, which work to preserve as much of the public web as possible. Its web archiving, web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains hu ...
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Edmond Hoyle
Edmond Hoyle (167229 August 1769) was an English writer best known for his works on the rules and play of card games. The phrase "according to Hoyle" (meaning "strictly according to the rules") came into the language as a reflection of his generally perceived authority on the subject; since that time, use of the phrase has expanded into general use in situations in which a speaker wishes to indicate an appeal to a putative authority. Early life undocumented Little is known about Hoyle's life; he is primarily known through his books. Much of what is written about him is untrue or exaggerated. The suggestion that he trained at the bar seems unfounded. Treatise on whist By 1741, Hoyle began to tutor members of high society at the game of whist, selling his students a copy of his manuscript notes. Hoyle expanded the manuscript and published ''A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist'' in 1742, selling it for the high price of one guinea. When the book quickly sold out, rather than pu ...
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Dominoes
Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces, commonly known as dominoes. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ''ends''. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also called '' pips'' or ''dots'') or is blank. The backs of the tiles in a set are indistinguishable, either blank or having some common design. The gaming pieces make up a domino set, sometimes called a ''deck'' or ''pack''. The traditional European domino set consists of 28 tiles, also known as pieces, bones, rocks, stones, men, cards or just dominoes, featuring all combinations of spot counts between zero and six. A domino set is a generic gaming device, similar to playing cards or dice, in that a variety of games can be played with a set. Another form of entertainment using domino pieces is the practice of domino toppling. The earliest mention of dominoes is from Song dynasty China found in the text ''Former Events in Wulin'' by Zhou Mi (1 ...
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Chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as we know them today emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide. Chess is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no use of dice or cards. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, t ...
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Dice
Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing games, and games of chance. A traditional die is a cube with each of its six faces marked with a different number of dots ( pips) from one to six. When thrown or rolled, the die comes to rest showing a random integer from one to six on its upper surface, with each value being equally likely. Dice may also have polyhedral or irregular shapes, may have faces marked with numerals or symbols instead of pips and may have their numbers carved out from the material of the dice instead of marked on it. Loaded dice are designed to favor some results over others for cheating or entertainment. History Dice have been used since before recorded history, and it is uncertain where they originated. It is theorized that dice developed from the practice ...
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Mahjong
Mahjong or mah-jongg (English pronunciation: ) is a tile-based game that was developed in the 19th century in China and has spread throughout the world since the early 20th century. It is commonly played by four players (with some three-player variations found in parts of China, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia). The game and its regional variants are widely played throughout East Asia, East and Southeast Asia and have also become popular in Western countries. The game has also been adapted into a widespread online entertainment. Similar to the Western card game rummy, Mahjong is a game of skill, strategy, and luck. To distinguish it from mahjong solitaire, it is sometimes referred to as mahjong rummy. The game is played with a set of 144 Mahjong tiles, tiles based on Chinese characters and Chinese culture, symbols, although many regional variations may omit some tiles or add unique ones. In most variations, each player begins by receiving 13 tiles. In turn, players draw ...
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Contract Bridge
Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions of people play bridge worldwide in clubs, tournaments, online and with friends at home, making it one of the world's most popular card games, particularly among seniors. The World Bridge Federation (WBF) is the governing body for international competitive bridge, with numerous other bodies governing it at the regional level. The game consists of a number of , each progressing through four phases. The cards are dealt to the players; then the players ''call'' (or ''bid'') in an auction seeking to take the , specifying how many tricks the partnership receiving the contract (the declaring side) needs to take to receive points for the deal. During the auction, partners use their bids to also exchange information about their hands, including o ...
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Auction Bridge
The card game auction bridge was the third step in the evolution of the general game of bridge. It was developed from bridge whist in 1904, possibly by 1900. Auction bridge was the precursor to contract bridge. Its predecessors were whist and bridge whist. Auction bridge trick scoring, bonus scoring, and penalty scoring are radically different from contract bridge, and there is no concept of vulnerability in auction bridge. Bidding rules are nearly the same, although in contract bridge bidding, many complex artificial bids and bidding systems have evolved. Origin It is not certain to whom auction bridge should be credited. A letter in ''The Times'' (London), January 16, 1905, signed by Oswald Crawfurd, describes auction bridge as first played in 1904, while a book by "John Doe" (Francis Reginald Roe), published in Allahabad, India, in 1899, puts forward auction bridge as an invention of three members of the Indian Civil Service stationed at an isolated community, designed as a th ...
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Whist
Whist is a classic English trick-taking card game which was widely played in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although the rules are simple, there is scope for strategic play. History Whist is a descendant of the 16th-century game of ''trump'' or ''ruff''. Whist replaced the popular variant of ''trump'' known as ruff and honours. The game takes its name from the 17th-century ''whist'' (or ''wist'') meaning ''quiet'', ''silent'', ''attentive'', which is the root of the modern ''wistful''. According to Daines Barrington, whist was first played on scientific principles by a party of gentlemen who frequented the Crown Coffee House in Bedford Row, London, around 1728. Edmond Hoyle, suspected to be a member of this group, began to tutor wealthy young gentlemen in the game and published ''A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist'' in 1742. It became the standard text and rules for the game for the next hundred years. In 1862, Henry Jones, writing under the pseudonym "Cavendish", publis ...
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