The Game of Ombre (as it appears in the poem)

Ombre, a three person card game, used a deck of 40 cards--the standard 52 card deck with the 8s, 9s, and 10s removed. Each player was dealt nine cards ("Each Band the number of the Sacred Nine") and the remaining cards were used to create a stock (Pope chose to ignore the role of the stock and many other details of the game).

Belinda, because she sits to the right of the dealer, gets the first chance to declare trumps or to pass. "Let Spades be Trumps! she said, and Trumps they were." Belinda now becomes the Ombre; the other two players unite to oppose her. To win the hand Belinda must win five out of the nine tricks; her opponents will try to prevent her from doing so.

Play begins. "Now move to War her Sable Matadores." Her Matadores are the highest ranking cards in the deck, which, because she chose spades as trump, are:

  1. Spadillo--the ace of spades
  2. Manillo--the two of spades
  3. Basto--the ace of clubs
Belinda plays her three Matadores in order, followed by "the hoary Majesty of Spades"; that is, the king of spades, the next highest ranking card in the deck. On the fourth trick, the Baron follows suit with the jack of spades; the other player, out of trump, plays the jack of clubs (known as Pam in the game of Lu). By playing the top four cards in the deck, Belinda wins the first four tricks; she needs only one more trick to win the hand.

Belinda, out of trump, tries to win her fifth trick by leading the highest club. Unfortunately, the Baron has no clubs but does have the queen of spades ("Th' Imperial Consort of the Crown of Spades"); he wins the trick by trumping her king. The Baron now wins three more tricks with the highest diamonds (king, queen, and jack/knave). Belinda ("oh shameful chance!") discards the queen of hearts when the jack of diamonds is led.

At this point, the Baron and Belinda each have won four tricks; whoever wins the last trick wins the game. (Technically, the Baron is playing as partner to the third player at the table. By this point in the game Pope has transformed the contest into a head to head duel between the Baron and Belinda.) The Baron plays his last card, the ace of hearts. This loses to Belinda's higher ranking king of hearts. Belinda wins and "The Nymph exulting fills with Shouts the Sky."