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. (9 Pet.) 704 (1835).Īlthough the game became scarce after World War II, it continued to be played at a few Las Vegas and Reno casinos through 1985. Criminal prosecutions of faro were involved in the Supreme Court cases of United States v. Cheating was prevalent enough that editions of Hoyle’s Rules of Games began their faro section warning readers that not a single honest faro bank could be found in the United States. 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. Some gambling houses would simply hang a picture of a tiger in their windows to advertise that a game could be played there.įaro's detractors regarded it as a dangerous scam that destroyed families and reduced men to poverty because of rampant rigging of the dealing box. 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'. The faro game 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. 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. Faro could be played in over 150 places in Washington, DC alone during the Civil War. It was played in almost every gambling hall in the Old West from 1825 to 1915.

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. The game 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. Basset was outlawed in 1691, and pharaoh emerged several years later as a derivative of basset, before it too was outlawed.ĭespite 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. The earliest references to a card game named pharaon are found in Southwestern France during the reign of Louis XIV.

Faro faro card game