Faro

Faro, Pharaoh, Farobank, is a late 17th century French gambling card game descendant of Basset, and belongs to the Lansquenet and Monte Bank family of games, in that it is played between a banker and several players winning or losing according to the cards turned up matching those already exposed or not.

Although not a direct relative of Poker, Faro was played by the masses alongside its other popular counterpart, due to its fast action, easy-to-learn rules, and better odds than most games of chance. The game of Faro is played with only one deck of cards and allows for any number of players, usually referred to as "punters."

History

France

The earliest references to a card game named pharaon are found in Southwestern France in the late 17th century (1688) during the reign of Louis XIV, although the Florentini Il Faraone may have been the root from where the game came to be known in France.

England

Pharaoh and basset, the most popular card games of the 18th and 19th century Europe, were forbidden in France during the reign of Louis XIV on severe penalties, but these games continued to be widely played in England during the 18th century. Pharo, the English alternate spelling of Pharaoh. was easy to learn, quick and, when played honestly, the odds for a player were the best of all gambling games, as records Gilly Williams in a letter to George Selwyn in 1752.

United States

With its name shortened to Faro, it soon spread to the America in the 19th century to become the most widespread and popularly favored gambling game in America. Also called "Bucking the Tiger", which comes from early card backs that featured a drawing of a Bengal Tiger, it was played in almost every gambling hall in the Old West from 1825 to 1915, .

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, so that many sporting-house began to supply companies gaffed dealing boxes specially designed so that the bankers could cheat on the players. Cheating then became so prevalent that editions of Hoyle’s Rules of Games book began their Faro section warning readers that a single honest faro bank could not be found in the United States. While the game became scarce after World War II, it continued to be played at a few Las Vegas and Reno casinos through 1985.

Etymology

Historians have suggested that the name Pharaon comes from Louis XIV's royal gamblers who called the game pharaon because of the motif that commonly adorned one of the French-made court cards of the later 19th century.[2] Another idea traces the name to the Irish word fairadh, pronounced "fearoo", meaning "to turn". It could have been brought to England and France through the mass emigration from Ireland, in particular in the aftermath of the Flight of the Wild Geese. Also the Irish Brigade served in France and may have brought the term with them.