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Faro is a casino card game played between a number
of players and a banker. The name is believed to be
a corruption of the word ‘Pharaoh”. Central to the
game is the Faro board. This board has the images of
cards of all 13 denominations usually in spades.
Bets are placed on the board. If a player wants to
bet on a ten he will place his chips on the ten of
spades on the board.
The standard Faro game is extremely simple. It is
played with one standard deck of 52 cards, which
is shuffled and placed face up in a spring loaded
cards dealing box. Once the players have placed
their bets the dealer removes the top card from
the box and discards it. The next card is
therefore exposed. It is known as the “losing”
card or the “banker’s” card. The house wins all
bets placed on the card of this denomination. The
losing card is then removed and placed to the
dealer’s right. The next card that is exposed is
known as the “winning” card or the “player’s card.
The players who bet on the card of this
denomination are paid out 1:1. Faro has a number
of special bets that add interest to the game. One
such bet is “coppering”. A small octagonal copper
piece is placed with the bet. This reverses the
bet for that particular player. If his bet is on
the “losing” card he wins and if his bet is on the
“winning” card he loses. The bets that are neither
lost nor paid out can be left for the next round.
Or they can be removed or relocated. New players
can join between rounds and existing players can
leave. When the players are ready and the bets are
placed the “winning” card from the last round is
removed and placed to the dealer’s left, thus
exposing the “losing” card of the current
round.
In this manner after removing the discard card
and playing 24 rounds of the game, three cards are
left in the deck. On the Faro table there is an
abacus like card counter that keeps track of the
number of cards of each denomination that have
gone out of play. Hence the denominations of the
last three cards are known. This leads to some
interesting bets. One such bet is called “betting
the turn”. If a player bets on guessing the
sequence in which the last three cards will emerge
and he guesses right then he is paid 5:1.
The “split” is a special bet that needs to be
explained. A player can place his wager between two
adjacent cards to cover both denominations. If the
losing card is of either denomination, the player
loses his bet. If the winning card is of either
denomination, the full wager counts towards the
winning card and the player is paid 1:1 for the full
wager. If one card covered is a losing card and the
other card covered is a winning card then the player
loses half his bet.
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