In his 1892 autobiography Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi, gambler-bunco artist George Devol described a brush he had with a celebrity in 1874. Devol was working in the Gold Room saloon in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, at the time. One day a strangely familiar gent, with blue-tinted spectacles and his hat pulled low on his forehead, sauntered up to a gaming table and placed a $50 bet, which he promptly lost. The fellow placed the same bet again and this time won. When the dealer handed over only $25, the stranger protested and was told, ‘the house limit’s 25.’ ‘But you took 50 when I lost,’ said the man. ‘Fifty goes when you lose,’ replied the dealer. Without warning, the furious player whacked the dealer and his partner over the head with his walking stick, toppled the table and began stuffing his pockets with the contents of the till. As he swung around to cover the room with two six-shooters, his hat fell off, revealing a mane of long, sandy hair and the familiar countenance of James Butler ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok.

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Whether or not we believe the old gambler’s tale (a brush with the ‘Prince of Pistoleers’ would have sold copies in 1892, especially since Hickok was no longer around to refute it), the story illustrates what a player was often up against when he tangled with the king of all frontier gambling games; faro. Born in France, the game came to America in the 1700s. Its name often spelled ‘pharo’ or ‘pharaoh,’ derived from period French playing cards, whose backs sometimes bore the likeness of an Egyptian ruler. Some early faro cards and layouts also displayed a portrait of a Bengal tiger, inspiring such terms as ‘bucking the tiger’ or ‘twisting the tiger’s tail’ to describe playing the game. In later years, a framed tiger portrait hanging outside a gaming house announced the presence of a faro game within.

Faro was possibly the simplest gambling game ever devised. Players bet against the house, placing bets upon a green cloth-covered layout with painted images of 13 cards, ace through king. Spades were usually depicted, but suits didn’t matter; only face value counted. The dealer dealt two cards per turn from a standard deck of 52, and the object was for players to predict which cards would appear. The first card of each turn lost for the player, but won for the bank. The second card won for the player. Chips, or ‘checks’ (as serious players called them), placed upon a card’s image bet that card to win for the player. Players could bet a card to lose by placing a hexagonal token called a copper (pennies were used in earlier days) atop the checks. If a pair turned up, the house took half of any bet on that card, these’splits’ representing an honest bank’s only real advantage. Players could back any number of cards and, if their cards did not appear, could change bets between turns. A lookout often supervised the game to prevent cheating, and would pay and collect all bets.

Originally, players could only back single cards, or groups of cards called figures, pots and squares. In later years, ‘heeling’ and’stringing along’ permitted Byzantine wagers wherein a single bet could cover several cards, betting them to win, lose, or any combination. Players could also wager that the face value of either card turned up would be odd, even, or the higher of the turn. Winning bets paid even money, except on the last turn, when players could ‘call the turn’ by guessing the order of the final three cards and winners were paid 4-to-1.

Unique to faro was the casekeeper, an abacuslike frame with miniature cards matching those on the layout. From each card ran a spindle with four button-shaped disks, and the dealer’s assistant, also called the casekeeper, moved these buttons to record the cards dealt. Some houses even provided printed cards, called tabs, so players could keep a similar tally. In early faro, the dealer dealt from his hand, and sleight-of-hand cheating was commonplace. In 1822, Virginia gambler Robert Bailey invented a brass dealing box with a hole in the top, which allowed cards to be slid out one by one. Bailey claimed this device prevented any shenanigans by dealers, but because it concealed the deck, many houses were skeptical and barred it from their premises. In 1825, an Ohio watchmaker named Graves perfected an open-top, spring-fed box that held the deck face up to eliminate any suspicion of cheating. This box, usually made of German silver, was an instant success and would remain the standard throughout faro’s long reign. Since the top card was exposed in these boxes, it was a ‘dead’ card and could not be bet upon. The top card became known as the’soda card,’ and the last card, also dead, was called ‘hock’.

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