Deadwood Magazine - History, News, Photos and Features from the American Frontier

Forgotten Faro

The Fading of a Favorite Western Pastime
By Shawn Werner

CREDIT: Adams Museum

Faro was a hugely popular game in Europe in the 18th century. Despite being prohibited in many places, faro games were enjoyed by everyone from the working class to aristocracy. Romantic poet William Wordsworth even wrote a few lines denouncing police that overlooked the illegal faro games that took place at the townhouse of the Earl and Countess of Buckingham and in favor of concentrating their efforts on trivial “sixpenny” publishing houses:

…is no informer there [among the rich]
Or is the painted staff’s avenging host
By sixpenny sedition shops engrossed
Or rather skulking for the common weal
Round fire-side treason parties en famille[?]

Faro’s popularity in America is believed to have begun in the 19th century gambling establishments in New Orleans. From there, the game worked its way up the Mississippi River on riverboat casinos and then spread west into mining camps like Deadwood.

The game is played by an indeterminate number of players called “punters” against the dealer who was referred to as “the bank.” Oftentimes, a game of faro was called “faro bank.” Chips, referred to as “checks,” were purchased from the house for use in betting. Check values ranged anywhere from 50 cents to $10.

The game took place on the faro table, which was a large rectangle with a distinguished section for the banker. It featured a standardized betting layout consisting of one card of each denomination from a standard, 52 card deck pasted to it. To bet, a player would lay their checks on one of the 13 cards. They could play multiple cards at a time with only one bet by placing the check in between the cards. There was usually a “high card” box that players could bet on as well. The cards were placed in a “dealing box” and the first card, known as the “soda,” was “burned off” and discarded from play, leaving 51 cards in the shoe.

The dealer would then draw two cards: the first being the banker’s card, placed on the right side of the dealing box; and the second being the player’s card, placed on the left. All bets placed on the banker’s card are forfeited to the house, and even money is paid to all bets placed on the player’s card. If the player’s card is higher than the banker’s card, all bets placed on the “high card” box win as well. Bets not placed on either can be withdrawn, changed or left to remain for the next round.

There is another interesting betting tool called a copper, an octagonal token. Players would place the copper on their check, and that reversed the player/banker cards on that bet, so the first card dealt would be the player’s card and the second would pay the bank, but only on the coppered bet. The only house advantage came from the drawing of two equal cards. In such an instance half of the bet placed on that card would be forfeit.

Being extremely easy to learn as well as the house having almost no distinct advantage made faro wildly popular throughout saloons in the Old West. Eventually, saloon owners decided that the house advantage wasn’t enough, and in the late 19th century it was nearly impossible to find a faro bank that wasn’t rigged.

The favorite method of rigging faro was accomplished through the use of modified or “gaffed” dealing boxes. Certain modifications would allow dealers to pull through two cards at once, or get a glimpse at future cards to subtly encourage players to make losing bets.

The dealers weren’t the only ones cheating by any means. A crafty player with sleight of hand could shift his bets to the winning cards. Another method was known as the “horsehair copper” or “silk thread copper” trick. This involved coppering a bet with a thin line attached to the copper. If a losing combination came up the copper could quickly be pulled reversing the outcome.

Exposed cheaters usually found their selves looking down the business end of a revolver, or at the very least could expect a beating.

The prevalence of cheating certainly contributed to faro’s decline, but not as much as new games like craps and roulette which offered more enticing payouts to the players and much better odds to the house. Today faro is played only by history buffs, aficionados and by historical re-enactors, but an online version of the game can be found for free at www.gleeson.us/faro/.

How a standard Faro table looked from the player’s point of view.