Gambling In The Old West Wikipedia
Gambling In The Old West
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Gambling In The Old West History

The Vegas Strip casinos, from North to South west side of the street: east side of the street Strat 2000 LVB (Las Vegas Blvd.) Formerly the Stratosphere, this is. People in the old west were known to bet on anything they could. This ranged from card games to boxing matches. This post about old west gambling history will tell you about famous gamblers in history and many gambling events players bet on that are still popular today.

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.

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’.

Although poker is better known today, it was fairly obscure until the late 1850’s and didn’t really catch on until the 1870s. Faro was the premier game; high-rolling gamblers liked the easy odds, and others enjoyed the quick action and the thrill of staking it all on the turn of a single card. One Colorado Gold Rush observer noted that faro was played by everyone ‘from the bonanza kings in their private clubs to the little bootblacks who buck the tiger in a shack on Carbonate Hill.’

Although it provided a colorful spectacle for both player and spectator, faro was a stately game, even amid the pandemonium of the typical gambling house. An Easterner observed in 1872 that ‘there is rarely a word spoken during the progress of a deal, for faro is the most quiet, and in that respect, the most gentlemanly of all games.’ But this same writer also warned that ‘faro honestly played is a game of pure chance, and sometimes favors the unfortunate who meddles with it.’ Players liked the seemingly favorable odds; bankers often liked the many opportunities for cheating. Chicanery was employed by players as well as dealers, but to be caught invited gunplay. Cheating was so prevalent in the States, however, that American editions of Hoyle’s rules began carrying disclaimers that honest faro could no longer be found. R.F. Foster, an early Hoyle editor, explained that ‘to justify this expenditure [of opening a faro bank], he [the dealer] must have some permanent advantage.’ He added that if no such advantage was inherent in the game, players were likely being cheated.

Mere months after Graves’ invention, crooked dealing boxes flooded the market, designed to allow dealers to predict and/or manipulate the order of cards dealt. These ‘gaffed’ boxes sold under such exotic names as ‘tongue-tell,’ ‘horse box,’ and ‘needle squeeze.’ Honest, or’square,’ boxes sold for around $30, while gaffed boxes went for up to $200. Graves cashed in on this development, designing many of these contraptions himself.

Close behind these boxes came an array of specially designed cards. ‘Sanded’ cards, roughened on one side, would cling together, and were used with ‘two-card’ boxes that allowed the dealer to slide out more than one card at a time. ‘Strippers’ were narrower on one end, or had curved sides, so a dealer could manipulate them during the shuffle to ‘put up’ splits. Since splits occurred naturally only about three times in two deals, there was an obvious house advantage in increasing the number dealt. A faro dealer’s salary often reached $100 to $200 per week, plus a percentage of the house take. Foster charged that these genets were not paid so amply’simply for pulling cards out of a box,’ and challenged bankers, as a good-faith gesture, to let him ‘put a typewriter girl in the dealer’s place.’ He apparently had no takers. Crooked games were called brace games, defined by Indiana gambler Mason Long as those ‘in which a man has no chance of winning unless the dealer breaks his finger, and that he never does.’ Brace houses sprang up nationwide, where ‘cappers’ posed as players and’steerers’ lured in unwary ‘gulls.’

Gambling In The Old West