To make the most advantageous use of one’s opportunities. Card-playing was popular in England from the mid-sixteenth century on, and terms from card games soon began to be transferred to other activities. This one appeared in print in Samuel Foote’s The Englishman in Paris (1753): “If Lucinda plays her cards well, we have not much to fear.” Whist, the antecedent of modern bridge, involves, with each hand dealt and bid, a suit that is designated as “trumps” (unless no-trumps is bid). For that hand, trump cards outrank all others. From this we have to play a trump card, meaning to make a winning move. Charles Lamb, who wrote extensively about whist between 1820 and 1829 (for London Magazine), was among the first to transfer trumps to mean any winning advantage: “Martin, if dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!”