[homoe]

"Play Your Cards Right".....

To act adeptly and with good judgement; to make the best and most effective use of the resources at one's disposal: to make the most advantageous use of one’s opportunities.

Sidebar: 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.”