Innocents and Card Sharpers A Game of Piquet 1861 by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier
PICQUET (pronounced pee-kay by the French, and picket by the English) is one of the few Regency cardgames that requires only two players, so it is often used as a metaphorical duel between the hero and the villain. Variations allow three and four and even seven players (known as roundtable picquet). Picquet uses a 32-card deck, with seven and above represented in each suit. The aim is to acquire certain combinations of cards which yield specific scores, then to play these cards in a high-card trick game. An adept player can calculate from his own hand and discards, and from his opponent’s declaration of combinations, what cards his opponent holds, and thus win the play of the hand part of the game.
Each of the two players receives twelve cards in the deal; the remaining eight cards, the “stock”, are left face down on the table. The nondealer then must discard at least one, and up to five cards, and replenish his dozen cards from the stock. The dealer than can discard and replenish as he desires, and the declaration of points begins.
The quickest score is “carte blanche” — being dealt a hand without any face cards. This must be declared before any discarding takes place, and scores ten points. Other scores, declared after the discard, include “point”, the greatest number of cards in any suit; “sequence”, a run of cards in the same sit (three in sequence equals three points, four equals four points, and five or more equals ten points plus the number of cards); and “sets”, cards of the same rank above nine (three equals three points, four equals fourteen points).
Each player declares his holding in each category if he thinks it will be greater than his opponent’s holding. The aim is to claim all the available scores without letting the opponent know too much about your hand. So when the declaration of “point” takes place, the nondealer will say “four” (meaning four cards in one suit), but not the suit. If the dealer has a higher number of cards in one suit, he will declare it and win a score of that number. But if both have four, they must add up the face value of the cards, and the winner gets four points. The sequence declaration allows the opportunities to score in each suit. The non-dealer might say “tierce” meaning three in sequence in one suit. If the dealer also has a tierce in any suit, he inquires, “How high?” The highest sequence wins the score for each pair of sequences.
Similarly, the set declaration allows more than one score. Whenever a tie occurs, neither player scores. At the end of the declaration, each player announces his starting point total. In theory, a player may challenge his opponent to prove a combination. But this is considered 
poor ton, as it adds insult to injury, impugning the opponent’s honor while demanding a show of his hand. A particularly secretive player might “sink”, that is, not declare, a combination he thinks will not win. But he cannot later claim it if he finds he would have won with it Obviously the dealer, always the last to declare, has the advantage here.
After declaration, the nondealer leads off the play of the hand. This is the simple high-card-in-suit contest — he lays down a card, the dealer tries to top it in the same suit, the winner of the trick leads off the next trick. The scoring, however, is truly tricky. The player scores one point for each card he leads higher than a nine, and one point each time he wins his opponent’s lead with a card higher than a nine. The winner of the last trick gets an extra point. To keep track, each player must announce his cumulative score with each point. After all the cards are played, the winner of seven or more tricks scores ten points. If the tricks are split six-six, neither scores. If a player gets all twelve tricks, he earns forty points for “capot”.
Other scores include “repique”: scoring thirty points in declarations before the opponent scores any (this gives an extra sixty points); and “pique”, scoring thirty points in declarations and play before the opponent scores any (this adds thirty). Thus, “piqued, repiqued, and capoted” entered the Regency lexicon, meaning something like “game, set, and match” — someone has won a clear and convincing victory against an inadequate adversary.
The winner is usually the player who reaches 100 points first, and the settlement is made on the difference in the two scores. (Sometimes the betting amount is doubled if the loser hasn’t made fifty points.) A high-stakes variant, called “Rubicon”, comprises six hands of play, with the cumulative score winner earning the difference between his score and the loser’s plus 100 points. If the loser doesn’t score at least 100 points, he is said to be “rubiconed”. The winner then scores the sum of the two players’ scores plus 100 points. As with whist, bettors usually play picquet for a certain amount per point, a pound being the threshold to truly high stakes.
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