Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Faro!

Faro was the doom of many a Georgian gambler, especially Georgiana. It put both her and her sister thousands of pounds in debt. It was also their favourite game. In fact faro was probably the most popular card game at the time. Lauren will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that even the Queen of France liked to play a round or too.

The game's popular died out with the 18th century was rebirthed in the American Wild West. Go figure, from courtesans to cowboys.

Well, great news! As alerted to by an amazing, yet anonymous commenter, we can play faro online! This saves me the trouble of be boring and explaining the rules in a post which I had been putting off. Sadly though, it's in a wild west setting; so pick up your panniers and dust off that dusty saloon chair, because it is quite addicting.

Now if only the folks at Gleeson.us would make us a version set in Devonshire House. A girl can only hope!

7 comments:

  1. Very fun -- I've wondered what that was. Do you happen to know what the game "lottery tickets" was? I know it was played in groups, and was considered at least relatively acceptable for respectable young women, and was around circa 1800, but that's all I know...

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  2. I love your picture, Heather! I can just see her riding off into the sunset with old Black Bart there. I'm off to lose my stays at the Faro table. Yippee Kai Yay!

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  3. HAHA if only we could set up an online faro table together!

    Dang and Blast, I haven't heard of that game, now I'm curious! Of course there was the actual lotto which was vastly popular and helped France get out of heaps of debt. I'll have to see if I can find anything on it.

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  4. I love the picture-it's perfectly suited!

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  5. Thank you, and thanks anonymous! Now I understand how Faro works. Neat! And I kind of like the western theme :)

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  6. No wonder G and H lost their money! This game is addictive!!

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  7. I know! I had the same reaction, and then I began thinking "I'm pretty good at this." Oh, this is how it begins. In my best round I had $310.

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