author
Edmond Hoyle
1672–1769
Best remembered as the man behind the phrase “according to Hoyle,” he turned the rules of popular games into clear, practical guides. His writing helped make whist and other table games easier to learn, teach, and settle fairly.
1 Audiobook
Hoyle's Games Modernized
by Professor Hoffmann, Edmond Hoyle
About the author
Very little is known for certain about his early life, but Edmond Hoyle was an English writer born in 1672 who became famous for explaining how card games should be played. In the 1740s he began teaching whist to fashionable London players, and his lessons grew into A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist (1742), the book that made his name.
Hoyle went on to publish works on other games, including quadrille, piquet, brag, backgammon, and chess. What made him stand out was not just that he wrote about games, but that he organized their rules and strategy in a clear, systematic way, helping players treat them as skills that could be studied rather than just picked up informally.
His reputation became so strong that “according to Hoyle” entered everyday language as a way of saying something is done by the accepted rules. He died on 29 August 1769, but his name remained a byword for authority, order, and fair play at the gaming table.