Both whist and picquet are games of skill and strategy. The same cannot be said for FARO (or pharoah), which is entirely a game of chance, barring any cheating, of course. Faro is one of the oldest cardgames still extant, and was the favorite game of the true gambler. It is a dramatic game, requiring a special table, a bank, and a dealer, so it was confined to faro houses or faro rooms in gambling hells. Still, the investment needed was small, so women often kept faro houses in the Regency era. The heroine of Georgette Heyer’s FARO’S DAUGHTER, Deborah Grantham, was a dealer at her aunt’s faro house, a most unsuitable job for a lady, to be sure.
The object of the game is to bet correctly on the rank of cards as they are dealt from the dealing box and on whether they will be winning or losing cards. The players–as many as can fit–stand around the faro table, which is covered with green baize or felt and painted with the layout of the thirteen cards. Usually, the cards depicted are spades, but the suit has no bearing on the game; only the rank of cards counts. A player places markers or chips (usually small rectangles of ivory) on the representative of card she thinks will be dealt in the next turn. If she thinks it will be a losing card, she adds a black or red hexagonal chip (sometimes a copper penny). She can also, at some faro tables, place a chip on the highcard to win or lose the next turn. In most faro houses, she is allowed to change or remove her bet between actions.
The dealer deals from a deck of cards face-up in a wooden dealing box with a slit in the side. The first card–the “soda”-is discarded after all bets are laid, and the rest of the cards are dealt in pairs, each pair constituting a “turn”. The first card dealt is laid down on the table–that is the losing card. The second card in the turn, now exposed, is left in the box as the winning card. The bets placed on the representations of the two exposed cards are thus decided.
Sometimes the dealer keeps track of the exposed cards on an abacus-like device, so that even the stupidest player knows which cards remain. The savvy players often wait till only one card in a rank is left to bet on it; this is called “betting the cases”. Others wait for the last turn, when three cards remain in the box. They can bet in the usual way (the last card, the hock, is discarded), or “call the turn”, that is, bet on the order the last cards will be dealt– “deuce first, king second, jack the hock”.
The play-off on a turn is even money–if you bet a pound, you get your pound back along with another pound. The payoff for calling the last turn correctly is four-to-one (the odds are five-to-one; the house gets the advantage). The house gets half of all bets in the case of a split, two of a kind showing up in a turn. So the house owner, or the holder of the “bank”, can clear a profit above her own successful bets.
Most faro gamblers evolve some system of betting, based primarily on superstition. For example, a fan of the “doubleout” system will watch to see whether the first card of a rank is a winner or loser, then bet that the other three cards in the rank will come out the same way.
Most Regency gamblers managed to lose their unmentionables on whist or picquet or faro, but a few opted for more exotic fare. Here is a “short-suits” guide to other games of chance:
Hazard Dice
HAZARD is a dice game, an ancestor of craps. Scropes Davies was one of many who came to grief “casting the devil’s bones”. The player (caster) casts two dice together, continuing to throw until he scores a five, six, seven, or eight. Whichever one he throws becomes “the main”. If his next throw (the chance) is the same, he has “nicked it” or won everything. If he throws “crabs” (two, three, eleven, or twelve), he has “thrown out” and lost. Otherwise, he keeps casting until he hits either the main and loses, or the chance to win. Other players can also place bets on his casting. A skill at calculating odds can help a bit in this game (because certain numbers like seven, result from more combinations of two dice than others), as can loaded dice or “uphills” –dice with mostly high numbers.
EVEN-ODD, or EO, is a spinning wheel game much like roulette, only with the letters E and O on the blades instead of red and black. Illegal throughout most of the Regency period, it was popular with the most outrageous ladies. EO required a special table and markers, was found only in clubs, often run by ladies who found faro less than profitable.
CHEMIN-DE-FER (“shinny”) required a special kidney-shaped green baize table, and a heavy mahogany box (called a “shoe”) to hold the eight decks of cards for the dealer. Though played very like Vingt-et-un (blackjack), the latter for some reason, was illegal for much of the 19th century.
- Main source: Hoyle’s Games, Scarney’s Encyclopedia of Cardgames.