My friend Dave Hassler contacted me last week and presented a little game he found on a disk for the TSC FLEX 2 OS called "whist" (from around 1980). The card game is a simplier version of Bridge or the german Skat, played with 52 cards, where you have to get tricks.

I did a small translation, but some parts of the game made no sense at all. The instructions were not telling you what happens in the game, some features of the game were unfinished, no scoring and some nasty errors without warning or reasons appeared.

The game wasn't finished, more a prototype.

First Dave and I looked out for rules of this game. It seems like this card game called 'Whist' was popular in the 17th century and indeed the predecessor of Bridge. Swedish Whist is a simplified version.

The game was coded in a horrible spaghetti way. A lot of GOTOs in places where you should not use them (within a for..next loop) and a lot of other brainf*cks.

I found a bug, Dave found some bugs and in the end he even coded the scoring system and we are able to play this game for the first time, like it should be.

Please feel free to download the Game of "4 Hand swediash Whist" from Dave's Site:

http://www.vanportmedia.com/PAL-1/games/

SWEDISH WHIST – This is a simpler variant on the 18th century game Whist, an ancestor of Bridge, in which you and your partner 'Lars' go up against the former champs of Uppsala City, the seemingly robotic twins Karin and Kerstin in an effort to take more tricks (usually) than your opponent. I found this on a 1980 TSC FLEX 2 OS archived disk...in Swedish. With help from The Webdoktor (Nils A.), we modified and augmented this to run under both KB9 and MITS Altair 6800 BASIC 1.1. The program plays a good game, and if you're unfamiliar with Whist, Wikipedia has a good, concise article on game play. Und auf Deutsch jetzt!