Poker 1880

• Poker 1880 Game
• Poker 1990

Whether on a riverboat atop the Mighty Mississippi or in the smoky dimness of a mining camp saloon, a lucky draw could turn a broken man into a winner. In the days of the frontier west, poker was king with the mustachioed likes of Wild Bill Hickok, Doc Holliday, “Canada” Bill Jones, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and hundreds of others.

In the old west towns of Deadwood, Dodge City, Tombstone, and Virginia City, gamblers played with their back to the wall and their guns at their sides, as dealers dealt games with names such as Chuck-A-Luck, Three Card Monte, High Dice, and Faro, by far the favorite in the wild west saloons.

The exact origin of poker is unknown but many have speculated that it originated from the 16th-century Persian card game called As Nas. Played with a 25 card deck containing five suits, the rules were similar to today’s Five Card Stud. Others are of the opinion that it was invented by the Chinese in 900 A.D. In all likelihood, the game derived from elements of various gambling diversions that have been around from the beginning of time.

If so, contact me. I want to buy your old poker chips. I collect antique ivory poker chips. I also collect old, plain mold, litho inlay poker/casino chips. At the top of the pecking order of these clay chips are what are known as Crest and Seal (C&S) chips. These chips, besides being old, plain mold with litho inlay, have a relatively thick. 12 Lost American Slangisms From The 1800s: NPR History Dept. Today's lingo seems creative, but slang in 19th century America was every bit as colorful. Faro, also known as Pharoah or Farobank, is an old west gambling game of French descent that first showed up in the late 17 th century. Although it’s hard to find a game of Faro being played anywhere today, it’s sometimes compared to poker because of their similar qualities of being easy to learn, fast, and having good odds.

Poker in the United States was first widely played in New Orleans by French settlers playing a card game that involved bluffing and betting called Poque in the early 1800s. This old poker game was similar to the “draw poker” game we play today. New Orleans evolved as America’s first gambling city as riverboat men, plantation owners and farmers avidly pursued the betting sport.

Poker in the United States was first widely played in New Orleans by French settlers playing a card game that involved bluffing and betting called Poque in the early 1800s. This old poker game was similar to the “draw poker” game we play today. Vloggers You May Already Know Andrew Neeme. Earlier this year, one of the most popular vloggers reached the 100,000-subscriber mark. Andrew Neeme is a poker player living in Las Vegas, where he.

The first American gambling casino was opened in New Orleans around 1822 by a man named John Davis. The club, open twenty-four hours a day, provided gourmet food, liquor, roulette wheels, Faro tables, poker, and other games. Davis also made certain that painted ladies were never far away. Dozens of imitators soon followed making the gaming dens the primary attraction of New Orleans. The city’s status as an international port and its thriving gambling industry created a new profession, called the card “sharper.”

Professional gamblers and cheats gathered in a waterfront area known as “the swamp,” an area even the police were afraid to frequent, and any gambler lucky enough to win stood a good chance of losing his earnings to thieves outside of the gambling rooms and saloons.

Gambling was outlawed in the rest of the huge Louisiana territory in 1811, but New Orleans continued to enjoy the prosperity brought by gambling for more than 100 years. Though the law was passed for the entire Louisiana Purchase, it was obviously not enforced and casinos and gambling began to spread.

As commerce developed on the waterways, gambling traveled up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, then westward via covered wagons, and later on the railroad. The first written reference in the United States came from Jonathan H. Greer in 1834 when he referred to the amusement as the “cheating game.”

Some of the first gambling dens outside of New Orleans were started on river towns that were popular with both travelers and professional gamblers. It was here that many “sharpers” preyed on these transient people, with their pockets filled with their life savings, on the way to the new frontier. The dishonest gamblers also often ran confidence games and other con artist businesses, in order to gaff the unwary pioneers. A host of companies specialized in manufacturing and selling card cheating devices. One riverboat gambler named George Devol was so proud of his ability to slip a stacked deck into a game that he once used four of them in one poker hand, dealing four aces to each of his four opponents.

It was professional gamblers who were largely responsible for the poker boom. Considering themselves as entrepreneurs, they took advantage of America’s growing obsession with gambling. Though having a high opinion of themselves, the public viewed them with disdain, considering them as contributing nothing to society. This viewpoint was often warranted in many cases, as a large number of professional gamblers often cheated in order to win. To be successful, professional gamblers had to have irresistible personalities in order to attract men to play with them. Often dressing in dandy clothes, their success depended partly on chance and partly on skill, sometimes on sleight of hand, and in the Old West, their shooting abilities. By the 1830s, citizens began to blame professional gamblers for any and every crime in the area and gambling itself began to be attacked.

James Bowie

It was during these riverboat gambling heydays that an interesting story occurred in 1832. On a Mississippi steamboat, four men were playing poker, three of which were professional gamblers, and the fourth, a hapless traveler from Natchez. Soon, the young naïve man had lost all his money to the rigged game. Devastated, the Natchez man planned to throw himself into the river; however, an observer prevented his suicide attempt, and then joined the card game with the “sharps.” In the middle of a high stakes hand, the stranger caught one of the professionals cheating and pulled a knife on the gambler, yelling, “Show your hand! If it contains more than five cards I shall kill you!” When he twisted the cheater’s wrist, six cards fell to the table. Immediately, the stranger took the $70,000 pot, returning $50,000 to the Natchez man and keeping $20,000 for his trouble. Shocked, the Natchez man stuttered, “Who the devil are you, anyway?” to which the stranger responded, “I am James Bowie.”

Anxious citizens of these river port towns grew more and more wary of the confidence men that were multiplying so quickly. In Vicksburg, Mississippi, the citizens’ rage had become so increased by 1835, five cardsharps were lynched by a vigilante group. It was soon after this that many of the gamblers moved onto the riverboats, benefiting from the transient riverboat lifestyle.

At the conclusion of the Civil War, America pushed her boundaries West, where the frontier was born of speculators, travelers, and miners. These hardy pioneers had high risk-taking characteristics, making any gambling situation a popular pastime for these rough and tumble men of the frontier. In virtually every mining camp and prairie town, a poker table could soon be found in each saloon, surrounded by prospectors, lawmen, cowboys, railroad workers, soldiers, and outlaws for a chance to tempt fortune and fate.

During the California Gold Rush of 1849 gambling houses sprouted up all over northern California, offering a wide array of not only gaming tables but also musicians and pretty women to entertain the gamblers as they played. It was at this time that dance halls began to appear and spread throughout later settlements. While these saloons usually offered games of chance, their chief attraction was dancing. The customer generally paid 75¢ to $1.00 for a ticket to dance, with the proceeds being split between the dance hall girl and the saloon owner. After the dance, the girl would steer the gentleman to the bar, where she would make an additional commission from the sale of a drink.

A popular girl would average 50 dances a night, sometimes making more a night than a working man could make in a month. Dance hall girls made enough money that it was very rare for them to double as a prostitute, in fact, many former “soiled doves” found they could make more money as a dance hall girl.

As the Gold Rush gained momentum, San Francisco replaced New Orleans as the center for gambling in the United States. Over one hundred thriving saloons and brothels met the sailors and fortune-seeking travelers as they disembarked at the San Francisco harbor and stumbled into the infamous Barbary Coast Waterfront District.

Faro was by far the most popular and prolific game played in Old West saloons, followed by Brag, Three-card-monte, and dice games such as High-low, Chuck-a-luck, and Grand hazard. It was also about this time that gambling began to invite more diversity including Hispanics, blacks, Chinese and women in the games. Three of the more famous women gamblers of this time were Calamity Jane, Poker Alice, and Madame Mustache.

Before long, many of the Old West mining camps such as Deadwood, Leadville, and Tombstone became as well known for gunfights over card games than they did for their wealth of gold and silver ore. Professional gamblers such as Doc Holliday and Wild Bill Hickok learned early to hone their six-shooter skills at the same pace as their gambling abilities. Taking swift action upon the green cloth became part of the gamblers’ code – shoot first and ask questions later.

One such occasion that clearly showed the quick and violent code was when Doc Holliday was dealing Faro to a local bully named Ed Bailey in Fort Griffin, Texas. Bailey was unimpressed with Doc’s reputation and in an attempt to irritate him; he kept picking up the discards and looking at them. Peeking at the discards was strictly prohibited by the rules of Western Poker, a violation that could force the player to forfeit the pot.

Though Holliday warned Bailey twice, the bully ignored him and picked up the discards again. This time, Doc raked in the pot without showing his hand, nor saying a word. Bailey immediately brought out his pistol from under the table, but before the man could pull the trigger, Doc’s lethal knife slashed the man across the stomach. With blood spilled everywhere, Bailey lay sprawled out dead across the table.

Inevitably there were liquored up miners and cowboys who would shoot up the saloons and sometimes the poker winner when they were angered by their losses. Even Wild Bill Hickok, who is mostly known for his heroics and prowess with a six-shooter, took advantage of those abilities when faced with a loss in Deadwood, South Dakota. Shortly before midnight after a night of drinking and gambling, Hickok was playing a two-handed game with a man named McDonald when the stakes began to increase with every card dealt.

When the hand was complete and the middle of the table piled high with money, McDonald showed his hand, displaying three jacks. To this, Hickok responded, “I have a full house – aces over sixes,” then threw his hand face down upon the table. However, when McDonald picked up Hickok’s hand, he exclaimed, “I see only two aces and one six.” Wasting no time, Wild Bill drew his six-shooter with his right hand and replied, “Here’s my other six.” Then he flashed a bowie knife with his left hand, stating, “And here’s my one spot.” McDonald immediately backed down saying coolly, “That hand is good. Take the pot.”

By the end of the 19th century, gambling had spread like wildfire through the many mining camps, multiplying as the gold and silver hunters spread across the West, searching for new strikes. It was about this time that both states and cities started to take advantage of these growing ventures by taxing gambling dens and raising money for their communities.

It was also during the late 1800s that many towns and states across the western frontier began to enact new laws against gambling. Attempting to gain new levels of respectability, the laws primarily targeted the “professional gambler” more than gaming in general. Some types of gambling were made illegal, while limits were established on others. Initially, anti-gaming laws were weak and had little real effect on gambling, as they were difficult to enforce, establishments simply introduced new variants, and penalties were light.

Faro gambling card game about 1900.

However, the laws were gradually strengthened and ironically, Nevada was one of the first states in the West to totally make gambling illegal in 1909. Other states soon followed suit and true to the worst fears of the Puritans, gangsters combined liquor and gambling in the cities of New York, Cleveland and Chicago during the 1920s.

By the time construction on the Hoover Dam was underway in 1931, Nevada relaxed its gambling laws and casinos once more began to flourish. By 1939 there were six casinos and sixteen saloons in Las Vegas. As automobile traffic increased and people began to travel more for leisure, Las Vegas began to boom into the gambling Mecca it is today.

Over the years, poker has evolved through legitimate casinos and backroom games to its many present variations. Over the last decade several states have reintroduced gambling in limited formats and the fastest-growing gambling opportunity today doesn’t even require you to leave your home, as you log onto your computer to tempt the fates. Carefully regulated by gaming laws, poker is now the most popular card game in the world.

© Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, updated November 2019.

“If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.” –– Paul Newman

Also See:

Faro (/ˈfɛəroʊ/FAIR-oh), Pharaoh, Pharao, or Farobank is a late 17th-century French gambling card game. It is descended from Basset, and belongs to the Lansquenet and Monte Bank family of games due to the use of a banker and several players. Winning or losing occurs when cards turned up by the banker match those already exposed.

It is not a direct relative of poker, but Faro was often just as popular due to its fast action, easy-to-learn rules, and better odds^[1] than most games of chance. The game of Faro is played with only one deck of cards and admits any number of players.

Popular in North America during the 1800s,^[2] Faro was eventually overtaken by poker as the preferred card game of gamblers in the early 1900s.^[3]

Variants include German Faro, Jewish Faro, and Ladies' Faro.

History[edit]

The earliest references to a card game named Pharaon (French for 'Pharaoh') are found in Southwestern France during the reign of Louis XIV. Basset was outlawed in 1691, and Pharaoh emerged several years later as a derivative of Basset, before it too was outlawed.^[4]

Despite the French ban, Pharaoh and Basset continued to be widely played in England during the 18th century, where it was known as Pharo, an English alternate spelling of Pharaoh.^[5] The game was easy to learn, quick, and when played honestly, the odds for a player were considered by some to be the best of all gambling games, as Gilly Williams records in a letter to George Selwyn in 1752.^[6]

With its name shortened to Faro, it spread to the United States in the 19th century to become the most widespread and popularly favored gambling game. It was played in almost every gambling hall in the Old West from 1825 to 1915.^[7] Faro could be played in over 150 places in Washington, D.C. alone during the Civil War.^[8] An 1882 study considered faro to be the most popular form of gambling, surpassing all others forms combined in terms of money wagered each year.^[4]

It was also widespread in the German states during the 19th century, where it was known as Pharao or Pharo. A simplified version played with 32 German-suited cards was known as Deutsches Pharao ('German Pharo') or Süßmilch. It is recorded in card game compendia from at least 1810 to 1975.

In the US, Faro was also called 'bucking the tiger' or 'twisting the tiger's tail', a reference to early card backs that featured a drawing of a Bengal tiger. By the mid 19th century, the tiger was so commonly associated with the game that gambling districts where faro was popular became known as 'tiger town', or in the case of smaller venues, 'tiger alley'.^[9] Some gambling houses would simply hang a picture of a tiger in their windows to advertise that a game could be played there.

Faro's detractors regarded it as a dangerous scam that destroyed families and reduced men to poverty because of rampant rigging of the dealing box. Crooked faro equipment was so popular that many sporting-house companies began to supply gaffed dealing boxes specially designed so that the bankers could cheat their players. (See section of cheating by dealers below.) Cheating was so prevalent that editions of Hoyle’s Rules of Games began their faro section by warning readers that not a single honest faro bank could be found in the United States. Criminal prosecutions of faro were involved in the Supreme Court cases of United States v. Simms, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 252 (1803),^[10] and Ex parte Milburn, 34 U.S. (9 Pet.) 704 (1835).^{[citation needed]}

Although the game became scarce after World War II, it continued to be played at a few Las Vegas and Reno casinos through 1985.^[11]

Etymology[edit]

Historians have suggested that the name Pharaon comes from Louis XIV's royal gamblers, who chose the name from the motif that commonly adorned one of the French-made court cards.^[5]

Rules[edit]

Description[edit]

A game of faro was often called a 'faro bank'. It was played with an entire deck of playing cards. One person was designated the 'banker' and an indeterminate number of players, known as 'punters', could be admitted. Chips (called 'checks') were purchased by the punter from the banker (or house) from which the game originated. Bet values and limits were set by the house. Usual check values were 50 cents to $10 each.

The faro table was typically oval,^[12] covered with green baize, and had a cutout for the banker. A board was placed on top of the table with one suit of cards (traditionally spades) pasted to it in numerical order, representing a standardized betting 'layout'. Each player laid his stake on one of the 13 cards on the layout. Players could place multiple bets and could bet on multiple cards simultaneously by placing their bet between cards or on specific card edges. A player could reverse the intent of his bet by placing a hexagonal (6-sided) token called a 'copper' on it. Some histories said a penny was sometimes used in place of a copper. This was known as 'coppering' the bet, and reversed the meaning of the win/loss piles for that particular bet. Players also had the choice of betting on the 'high card' bar located at the top of the layout.

Procedure[edit]

• A deck of cards was shuffled and placed inside a 'dealing box', a mechanical device also known as a 'shoe', which was used to prevent manipulations of the draw by the banker and intended to assure players of a fair game.
• The first card in the dealing box was called the 'soda' and was 'burned off', leaving 51 cards in play. The dealer then drew two cards: the first was called the 'banker's card' and was placed on the right side of the dealing box. The next card after the banker's card was called the carte anglaise (English card) or simply the 'player's card', and it was placed on the left of the shoe.^[8]
• The banker's card was the bettor's 'losing card'; regardless of its suit, all bets placed on the layout's card that had the same denomination as the banker's card were lost by the players and won by the bank. The player's card was the 'winning card'. All bets placed on the card that had that denomination were returned to the players with a 1 to 1 (even money) payout by the bank (e.g., a dollar bet won a dollar). A 'high card' bet won if the player’s card had a higher value than the banker’s card.^[9]
• The dealer settled all bets after each two cards drawn. This allowed players to bet before drawing the next two cards. Bets that neither won nor lost remained on the table, and could be picked up or changed by the player prior to the next draw.
• When only three cards remained in the dealing box, the dealer would 'call the turn', which was a special type of bet that occurred at the end of each round. The object now was to predict the exact order that the three remaining cards, Bankers, Players, and the final card called the Hock, would be drawn.^[8] The player's odds here were 5 to 1, while a successful bet paid off at 4 to 1 (or 1 to 1 if there were a pair among the three, known as a 'cat-hop'). This provided one of the dealer's few advantages in faro. If it happened that the three remaining cards were all the same, there would be no final bet, as the outcome was not in question.

Certain advantages were reserved to the banker: if he drew a doublet, that is, two equal cards, he won half of the stakes upon the card which equaled the doublet. In a fair game, this provided the only 'house edge'. If the banker drew the last card of the pack, he was exempt from doubling the stakes deposited on that card.^[13] These and the advantage from the odds on the turn bet provided a slight financial advantage to the dealer or house. To give themselves more of an advantage, and to counter the losses from players cheating, the dealers would also often cheat as well.^[4]

A device, called a 'casekeep' was employed to assist the players and prevent dealer cheating by counting cards. The casekeep resembled an abacus, with one spindle for each card denomination, with four counters on each spindle. As a card was played, either winning or losing, one of four counters would be moved to indicate that a card of that denomination had been played. This allowed players to plan their bets by keeping track of what cards remained available in the dealing box. The operator of the case keep is called the 'casekeeper', or colloquially in the American West, the 'coffin driver'.

Cheating[edit]

In a fair game the house's edge was low, so bankers increasingly resorted to cheating the players to increase the profitability of the game for the house. This too was acknowledged by Hoyle editors when describing how faro banks were opened and operated: 'To justify the initial expenditure, a dealer must have some permanent advantage.'^[4]

By dealers[edit]

Dealers employed several methods of cheating:

• Stacked or rigged decks: A stacked deck would consist of many paired cards, allowing the dealer to claim half of the bets on that card, as per the rules. A rigged deck would contain textured cards that allowed dealers to create paired cards in the deck while giving the illusion of thorough shuffling.^[4]
• Rigged dealing boxes: Rigged, or 'gaffed', dealing boxes came in several variants. Typically, they allowed the dealer to see the next card prior to the deal, by use of a small mirror or prism visible only to the dealer. If the next card was heavily bet, the box could also allow the dealer to draw two cards in one draw, thus hiding the card that would have paid.^[4] This would result in the casekeep not accounting for the hidden card, however. If the casekeeper were employed by the house, though, he could take the blame for 'accidentally' not logging that card when it was drawn.
• Sleight of hand: In concert with the rigged dealing box, the dealer could, when he knew the next card to win, surreptitiously slide a player's bet off of the winning card if it was on the dealer's side of the layout. At a hectic faro table he could often get away with this, though it was obviously a risky move.

By players[edit]

Players would routinely cheat as well. Their techniques employed distraction and sleight-of-hand, and usually involved moving their stake to a winning card, or at the very least off the losing card, without being detected.^[4] Their methods ranged from crude to creative, and worked best at a busy, fast-paced table:

• Simple move of their bet: The most basic cheat was simply to move one's bet to the adjacent card on the layout while avoiding the banker noticing. While the simplest, it also carried the greatest risk of detection.
• Moving with a thread: A silk thread or single horse hair would be affixed to the bottom check in the bet, and allowed the stack to be pulled across the table to another card on the layout. This was less risky, as the cheating player would not have to make an overt action.
• Removing the copper: A variant on the use of the thread was to affix it to the copper token used to reverse the bet. If the losing card matched the player's bet, the copper made it a winning bet and no cheat was needed. If, however, the winning card, dealt second, were to match the player's bet the copper would ordinarily make it a loser, but quickly snatching the copper from the stack with the invisible thread turned it into a winner. This held the least risk, as once the copper was yanked from the stack, there was no thread left attached to the bet.

Being caught cheating often resulted in a fight, or even gunfire.^[4]

In culture[edit]

Etymology[edit]

• The old phrase 'from soda to hock', meaning 'from beginning to end' derives from the first and last cards dealt in a round of faro.^[14] The phrase evolved from the better known 'from soup to nuts'. In turn, 'soda' and 'hock' are probably themselves derived from 'hock and soda', a popular nineteenth-century drink consisting of hock (a sweet German wine) combined with soda water.

Geography[edit]

• The town of Faro, Yukon was named after the game.^{[citation needed]}

History[edit]

The well-known author of Regency romances, Georgette Heyer, wrote a novel titled 'Faro's Daughter'; it tells of a young lady forced to deal faro to support her family and her ensuing romance with one of the gaming hall patrons (written 1941).

• The 18th-century adventurer and author Casanova was known to be a great player of faro. He mentions the game frequently in his autobiography.
• The 18th-century Prussian officer, adventurer, and author Friedrich Freiherr von der Trenck makes mention of playing faro in his memoirs (February 1726 – 25 July 1794).
• The 18th-century Dutch cavalry commander Casimir Abraham von Schlippenbach (1682–1755) also mentions the game (as Pharaon) in his memoirs. Apparently, he was able to win considerable sums of money with the game.
• The 18th century Whig radical Charles James Fox preferred faro to any other game.
• The 19th-century American con man Soapy Smith was a faro dealer. It was said that every faro table in Soapy's Tivoli Club in Denver, Colorado, in 1889 was gaffed (made to cheat).
• The 19th-century scam artist Canada Bill Jones loved the game so much that, when he was asked why he played at one game that was known to be rigged, he replied, 'It's the only game in town.'
• The 19th-century lawman Wyatt Earp dealt faro for a short time after arriving in Tombstone, Arizona having acquired controlling interest in a game out of the Oriental Saloon.^[15]
• The 19th-century dentist and gambler John 'Doc' Holliday dealt faro in the Bird Cage Theater as an additional source of income while living in Tombstone, Arizona.^[16]

In popular culture[edit]

Literature and its adaptations

• In Edna Ferber's novel Show Boat, the gambler Gaylord Ravenal specializes in the game of Faro.
• Faro is mentioned extensively in John D. Fitzgerald's semi-autobiographical Silverlode/Adenville trilogy, which consists of the books Papa Married a Mormon, Mama's Boarding House, and Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse. It is one of the primary games played at the Whitehorse Saloon, owned by the character Uncle Will. In Mama's Boarding House the character Floyd Thompson, one of the tenants in the boarding house, is a Faro dealer.
• Faro is also occasionally mentioned in Fitzgerald's corresponding Great Brain series, which focuses on the children of Adenville.
• In Oliver La Farge's story 'Spud and Cochise' (1935), the cowboy Spud plays Faro when he is in a very good mood. Aware of the widespread dishonesty of American Faro dealers in his time, he nevertheless bets heavily, viewing his gambling losses as a form of charity.
• In Jack London's novel White Fang, the owner of the bulldog, Tim Keenan, is a faro dealer.
• In the Giulietta act of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann (based on three short stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann), Giulietta invites Schlemil to take his place at the table of Pharaoh.
• In Massenet's opera Manon, the game at the Hotel Transylvania is faro, and Guillot accuses des Grieux and Manon of cheating at it.
• Lord Ruthven in John William Polidori's 'The Vampyre' plays Faro in Brussels.
• The miners in Puccini's opera La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West), based on David Belasco's play The Girl of the Golden West, play a contentious game of Faro in Act One.
• Faro is central to the plot of Alexander Pushkin's story 'The Queen of Spades' and Tchaikovsky's opera adaptation, The Queen of Spades.
• In Wesley Stace's Misfortune, the character 'Pharaoh' is named after his father's profession, a Faro dealer.
• In Thackeray's novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, the main character runs a crooked faro bank, alternatively to his great fortune or ruin.
  • In its film adaptation, Barry Lyndon, one of the famous candlelit scenes shows Barry and his employer cheating at Faro. In the background a Moorish servant holds a casekeep showing which cards have been played.
• In a famous scene from Leo Tolstoy's book War and Peace, Nicholas Rostov loses 43,000 rubles to Dolokhov playing Faro.

Games

• In the video game Assassin's Creed Unity (2014), the main character Arno Dorian, in the early stages of the game, plays a game of Faro with a blacksmith but loses after the blacksmith cheats. Arno loses his deceased father's pocket watch and breaks into the blacksmith's house to steal it back.

Radio and motion pictures

• In the HBO TV series Deadwood, Al Swearengen mentions Faro, rather than poker, is played in his Gem Saloon, and Faro The game is referred to frequently throughout the series.
• Numerous references to Faro are made in both the Westernradio drama Gunsmoke, starring William Conrad, and the television drama Gunsmoke starring James Arness.
• The Murdoch Mysteries episode 'Staircase to Heaven' involves a murder during a game of Faro.
• In the American western The Shootist (1976), Jack Pulford (Hugh O'Brian) is a professional gambler and a Faro dealer at the Metropole Saloon.
• When planning The Sting on New York gangster Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), one of the conmen researching their mark mentions that he 'only goes out to play Faro', making him a hard target for the big con.
• In the film Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, played by Kurt Russell, becomes a Faro dealer after arriving in Tombstone.

Podcasts

• In episode 29 of the horror fiction podcast The Magnus Archives, a soldier in the Revolutionary War plays a game of Faro against a Grim Reaper-type figure to avoid his fate. Notably, as he is about to lose (and therefore die), he removes the copper in the manner described above to literally 'cheat death'.^[17]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^https://wizardofodds.com/games/faro/
2. ^'The Faro: A Card Shuffle and a Card Game'. 19 March 2019. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
3. ^Johnson, Karl (2005). The Magician and the Cardsharp: The Search for America's Greatest Sleight-of-Hand Artist (Adapted ed.). New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN978-0-8050-7406-2.
4. ^ ^abcdefgh'Faro card game - Cheating at faro'.
5. ^ ^abScarne, John Scarne on Card Games: How to Play and Win at Poker, Pinochle, Blackjack, Gin and Other Popular Card Games pg. 163 Dover Publications (2004) ISBN0-486-43603-9
6. ^Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine vol. 15 pg. 176 London 1844
   Our life here would not displease you, for we eat and drink well,
   and the Earl of Coventry holds a Pharaoh-bank every night to us,
   which we have plundered considerably.
7. ^Oxford Dictionary of Card Games, p. 16, David Parlett – Oxford University Press 1996 ISBN0-19-869173-4
8. ^ ^abc'How to play faro'. Bicycle Playing Cards. Archived from the original on 2013-12-14.
9. ^ ^ab'Faro, or Bucking the Tiger'. Legends of America.
10. ^'United States v. Simms 5 U.S. 252 (1803)'. Justia. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
11. ^Murphy, Jim. 'Faro Card Game'. RealMoneyAction.com. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
12. ^The hand-book of games, p. 336, H.G. Bohn – Bell & Daldy, London 1867
13. ^The book of card games, p. 121, Peter Arnold – Barnes & Noble 1995 ISBN1-56619-950-6
14. ^Soda to hock: The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Oxford Reference. 2005. doi:10.1093/acref/9780198609810.001.0001. ISBN9780198609810.
15. ^William M. Breakenridge, Richard Maxwell Brown Helldorado: bringing the law to the mesquite Pg. 171 University of Nebraska Press (1992) ISBN0-8032-6100-4
16. ^Wesley Treat, Mark Moran, Mark Sceurman Weird Arizona: Your Travel Guide to Arizona's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets Pg. 190 Sterling (2007) ISBN1-4027-3938-9
17. ^https://snarp.github.io/magnus_archives_transcripts/episode/029.html

• In the video game Assassin's Creed Unity (2014), the main character Arno Dorian, in the early stages of the game, plays a game of Faro with a blacksmith but loses after the blacksmith cheats. Arno loses his deceased father's pocket watch and breaks into the blacksmith's house to steal it back.

Radio and motion pictures

• In the HBO TV series Deadwood, Al Swearengen mentions Faro, rather than poker, is played in his Gem Saloon, and Faro The game is referred to frequently throughout the series.
• Numerous references to Faro are made in both the Westernradio drama Gunsmoke, starring William Conrad, and the television drama Gunsmoke starring James Arness.
• The Murdoch Mysteries episode 'Staircase to Heaven' involves a murder during a game of Faro.
• In the American western The Shootist (1976), Jack Pulford (Hugh O'Brian) is a professional gambler and a Faro dealer at the Metropole Saloon.
• When planning The Sting on New York gangster Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), one of the conmen researching their mark mentions that he 'only goes out to play Faro', making him a hard target for the big con.
• In the film Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, played by Kurt Russell, becomes a Faro dealer after arriving in Tombstone.

Podcasts

• In episode 29 of the horror fiction podcast The Magnus Archives, a soldier in the Revolutionary War plays a game of Faro against a Grim Reaper-type figure to avoid his fate. Notably, as he is about to lose (and therefore die), he removes the copper in the manner described above to literally 'cheat death'.^[17]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^https://wizardofodds.com/games/faro/
2. ^'The Faro: A Card Shuffle and a Card Game'. 19 March 2019. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
3. ^Johnson, Karl (2005). The Magician and the Cardsharp: The Search for America's Greatest Sleight-of-Hand Artist (Adapted ed.). New York: Henry Holt and Co. ISBN978-0-8050-7406-2.
4. ^ ^abcdefgh'Faro card game - Cheating at faro'.
5. ^ ^abScarne, John Scarne on Card Games: How to Play and Win at Poker, Pinochle, Blackjack, Gin and Other Popular Card Games pg. 163 Dover Publications (2004) ISBN0-486-43603-9
6. ^Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine vol. 15 pg. 176 London 1844
   Our life here would not displease you, for we eat and drink well,
   and the Earl of Coventry holds a Pharaoh-bank every night to us,
   which we have plundered considerably.
7. ^Oxford Dictionary of Card Games, p. 16, David Parlett – Oxford University Press 1996 ISBN0-19-869173-4
8. ^ ^abc'How to play faro'. Bicycle Playing Cards. Archived from the original on 2013-12-14.
9. ^ ^ab'Faro, or Bucking the Tiger'. Legends of America.
10. ^'United States v. Simms 5 U.S. 252 (1803)'. Justia. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
11. ^Murphy, Jim. 'Faro Card Game'. RealMoneyAction.com. Retrieved 25 July 2016.
12. ^The hand-book of games, p. 336, H.G. Bohn – Bell & Daldy, London 1867
13. ^The book of card games, p. 121, Peter Arnold – Barnes & Noble 1995 ISBN1-56619-950-6
14. ^Soda to hock: The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Oxford Reference. 2005. doi:10.1093/acref/9780198609810.001.0001. ISBN9780198609810.
15. ^William M. Breakenridge, Richard Maxwell Brown Helldorado: bringing the law to the mesquite Pg. 171 University of Nebraska Press (1992) ISBN0-8032-6100-4
16. ^Wesley Treat, Mark Moran, Mark Sceurman Weird Arizona: Your Travel Guide to Arizona's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets Pg. 190 Sterling (2007) ISBN1-4027-3938-9
17. ^https://snarp.github.io/magnus_archives_transcripts/episode/029.html

Further reading[edit]

Poker 1880 Game

• Boussac, Jean. The Faro: Gameplay and Rules. (1896) Transl. from French, 2017.
• Dawson, Tom and Dawson, Judy. The Hochman Encyclopedia of American Playing Cards, Stamford, Connecticut: US Games Systems Inc., 2000. ISBN1-57281-297-4 (Gives historical account of Faro cards in the US, extensively illustrated.)
• Maskelyne, John Nevil. Sharps and Flats, (London: 1894; reprint, Las Vegas: GBC). ISBN978-0-89650-912-2
• Russell, Gillian. 'Faro's Daughters': Female Gamesters, Politics, and the Discourse of Finance in 1790s Britain.' Eighteenth-Century Studies 33.4 (2000): 481-504. Online
• Sanders, J. R. Faro: Favorite Gambling Game of the Frontier, Wild West Magazine, October 1996.

External links[edit]

Poker 1990

• How to Play Faro on YouTube—Demonstration of how the game is played.