Officially, three employees of the house were required to play Faro: the dealer, who dealt the cards the lookout, who kept his eye on the bets and made sure the game was square, and the casekeeper, who used an abacus to track the cards as they were played. A player could also place a “Copper“, usually an octagon-shaped chip, on any card to bet that it would appear in the losing pile. They could also bet on whether the winning card was higher than the losing card. The numerical order of the cards was unimportant players placed their chips on the painted cards to bet whether that card would appear in the winning pile. Simply put, the pile on the left lost and the pile on the right won. The rest of the game consisted of dealing the cards one at a time into the two piles. The dealer placed the cards into a “dealing box”. The game consisted of one deck and a Faro board painted with thirteen cards running from Ace to King, plus a square for betting on the High Card. In America the name was spelled Faro, but was also known as Bucking the Tiger due to the picture of a tiger that often appeared on the back of American playing cards. With origins in France during the early 1700’s, “Pharoah“, as it was originally called, soon spread to the United States. Nary a saloon in the West was without it, and several well known figures of the time-Soapy Smith and Doc Holliday amongst them-made their riches by banking the game.

In the old west Faro was more popular than Poker, so chosen because it was amazingly easy to play. So did Nugget, the main character in Conrad Richter’s book Tacey Cromwell, describe how his brother practiced so he could get a job dealing Faro during the late 1800‘s. Deftly he slapped stacks of chips-we always called them checks-on certain cards of the layout.” As he drew, I could see his lips move and knew he was making bets for imaginary customers. “The ancient card faces painted on the layout were doubtless faded and worn but to my boyish eyes they glowed like a church’s stained-glass window… started drawing the cards one by one from the battered old silver box. Portions of this article have appeared in Colorado Central magazine.

What was the card game faro