Card Games - 2 | Britannica.com Card Games game played for pleasure or gambling (or both) with one or more decks of playing cards. Displaying 1 - 48 of 48 results all fours ancestor of a family of card games dating back to 17th-century England and first mentioned in The Complete Gamester of Charles Cotton in 1674. The face card formerly known as the knave owes its modern name of jack to this game. Originally, all fours... baccarat casino card game resembling, but simpler than, blackjack. In basic baccarat the house is the bank. In the related game chemin de fer, or chemmy, the bank passes from player to player. In punto banco it appears to pass from player to player but is actually... belote trick-and-meld card game derived from klaberjass about 1920 and now the most popular card game in France. The original game was for two players, and there are versions for three players, but the most popular form now is the four-player partnership game,...

bezique trick-and-meld card game related to pinochle, both of which derive from the 19th-century French game of binocle, itself a development of the card game sixty-six. Bezique is now mostly played by two players using a 64-card deck consisting of two standard... blackjack gambling card game popular in casinos throughout the world. Its origin is disputed, but it is certainly related to several French and Italian gambling games. In Britain since World War I, the informal game has been called pontoon. Players hope to get... bridge card game derived from whist, through the earlier variants bridge whist and auction bridge. The essential features of all bridge games, as of whist, are that four persons play, two against two as partners; a standard 52-card deck of playing cards is... canasta card game of the rummy family, developed in Buenos Aires, Arg., and Montevideo, Uruguay, in the 1940s and popular in the United States and Great Britain from the 1950s on. The name canasta, from the Spanish word for “basket,” probably derives from the...

card game game played for pleasure or gambling (or both) with one or more decks of playing cards. Games using playing cards exploit the fact that cards are individually identifiable from one side only, so that each player knows only the cards he holds and not... casino card game for two to four players, best played with two. A 52-card deck is used. When two play, the dealer deals two cards facedown to the opponent, two cards faceup to the table, and two more facedown to himself and then repeats the process so that... chemin de fer French card game played mainly in European and Latin American casinos. The game is played by up to 12 players, on a kidney-shaped table; the object is to total 9 with a hand of two or three cards. When the cards total a two-digit number, the first digit... crazy eights popular children’s card game. The basic idea is to be the first to play all one’s cards to a communal discard pile. This game has a huge number of variations and many alternative names. At its simplest, two players each receive seven cards from a standard...

cribbage card game in which the object is to form counting combinations that traditionally are scored by moving pegs on a special cribbage board. The appeal of the game, usually played by two but with a popular variant played by four or occasionally by three,... domino simple gambling card game playable by two to eight players. The full deck of 52 cards is dealt out singly, so some hands may contain one more card than others. All players ante an agreed amount to a betting pool. In some circles anyone dealt one card... eleusis card game invented by Robert Abbott and first described in Martin Gardner’s “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American (July 1959). A more-refined version appeared in Abbott’s New Card Games (1967), with a further extension privately published... euchre card game popular in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Great Britain, especially in Cornwall and the West Country of England. It derives from a 19th-century Alsatian game called juckerspiel from the fact that its two top trumps are Jucker,... Fan-Tan card game that may be played by any number of players up to eight.

The full pack of 52 cards is dealt out, one card at a time. Thus, some hands may contain one more card than others. All players ante to a pool; in some games, those players who are dealt... faro one of the oldest gambling games played with cards, supposedly named from the picture of a pharaoh on certain French playing cards. A favourite of highborn gamblers throughout Europe well into the 19th century, faro was the game at which the young Count... five hundred card game for two to six players, devised in 1904 by the United States Playing Card Company. Though later eclipsed by bridge, it still has a substantial American following and has also become the national card game of Australia and New Zealand. Five... hanafuda (Japanese: “flower cards”), deck of 48 cards divided into 12 suits of four cards. Each suit is named for a month of the year and pictures a flower identified with that month. The cards are tiny, only 2 1 8 by 1 1 4 inches (5.4 by 3.2 cm), but about three... hearts card game in which players aim to avoid taking tricks that contain hearts.

Hearts first appeared in the United States about 1880, although it derives from the much older European game of reverse. In the late 20th century a version of hearts was included... Hoyle, Edmond English writer, perhaps the first technical writer on card games. His writings on the laws of whist gave rise to the common phrase “according to Hoyle,” signifying full compliance with universally accepted rules and customs. Hoyle’s life before 1741... klaberjass two-player trick-taking card game, of Dutch origin but especially popular in Hungary (as klob) and in Jewish communities throughout the world. From it derives belote, the French national card game. Klaberjass is played with a 32-card pack. In nontrump... loo gambling card game often mentioned in English literature. The name derives from the French lanturlu, the refrain of a popular 17th-century song. Popularity of the game faded in the 20th century. The players may number from five to about nine, each playing... nap gambling card game played throughout northern Europe under various names and guises. It reached England in the 1880s.

Its title may commemorate the deposed Napoleon III. Three or more players—ideally five—use a standard 52-card deck from which an agreed... old maid simple card game popular with young children. It takes its name from a 19th-century specially illustrated deck of cards showing colourful characters in matching pairs, plus a single old maid card. In Germany the equivalent game is called schwarzer Peter... ombre Anglicized version of the classic Spanish card game originally called hombre (meaning “man”) and now known as tresillo in Spain and South America. Three players each receive 10 cards from the Spanish suited 40-card deck lacking 10-9-8 in each suit; the... pan card game played only in the western United States, where it is popular as a gambling game in many clubs. It developed from conquian, the ancestor of rummy games. Eight standard 52-card decks from which the 8s, 9s, and 10s have been removed are used,... pinochle American card game typically played by three players acting alone (cutthroat) or four players in two partnerships. The game derives from a German variety of bezique called binokel (French binocle).

All these names mean “eyeglasses” (literally “two-eyes”)... piquet card game, known since the 15th century in France. For centuries piquet has been regarded as one of the greatest two-player card games. In 1534 François Rabelais listed it as a favorite pastime of his fictional hero Gargantua, and in 1892 the delegates... Pokémon 20th- and 21st-century Japanese fantasy-based cartoon creatures that spawned a video- and card-game franchise. In the Pokémon —or “Pocket Monsters”—video-game series, players were able to explore the game’s fictional world by looking for wild Pokémon... poker card game played in various forms throughout the world. Its popularity is greatest in North America, where it originated. It is played in private homes, in poker clubs, in casinos, and over the Internet. Poker has been called the national card game of... preference trick-taking card game for three players, widely played throughout eastern Europe, popular in Austria, and regarded since the early 19th century as the national card game of Russia. Preference, descended from ombre, took its name from its order of preference...

president card game of Chinese origin that suddenly appeared in the Western world during the 1980s. President is just one of many different names for the game, most of them vulgar and some scatological, and the game itself is played in many different forms with... red dog name for two different simple gambling card games. In one version of red dog—also known as yablon, acey-deucey, and between the sheets—each player puts up an initial stake, and the banker deals two cards faceup. Unless the ranks of the cards are the... Reese, John Terence British bridge authority who was one of the game’s best players ever and was considered its most outstanding and prolific writer (b. Aug. 28, 1913--d. Jan. 29, 1996). rummy any of a family of card games whose many variants make it one of the best-known and most widely played card games. Rummy games are based on a simple mechanism and a simple object of play. The mechanism is to draw cards from a stockpile and discard unwanted...

sixty-six two-player card game, ancestral to bezique and pinochle, that was first recorded in 1718 under the name Mariagen-Spiel (German: “the marriage game”). It is still popular in Germany, even more so in Austria under the name Schnapsen (“booze”). The game... skat card game for three players, but usually four participate, with each player sitting out a turn as dealer. It is Germany’s national card game. It originated in Altenburg, near Leipzig, about 1817 and is played wherever Germans have settled; the International... slap jack children’s action card game for up to eight players. A 52-card deck is dealt in facedown stacks (which need not be equal), one for each player. Beginning at the dealer’s left, each player turns up his stack’s top card and places it in the middle of the... solitaire family of card games played by one person. Solitaire was originally called (in various spellings) either patience, as it still is in England, Poland, and Germany, or cabale, as it still is in Scandinavian countries. The terms patience and solitaire have...

spades trick-taking card game of the whist family that became very popular in the United States in the 1990s, though reportedly some 40 years old by that time. It is played by four players in bridge-style partnerships, each being dealt 13 cards one at a time... tarot any of a set of cards used in tarot games and in fortune-telling. Tarot decks were invented in Italy in the 1430s by adding to the existing four-suited pack a fifth suit of 21 specially illustrated cards called trionfi (“triumphs”) and an odd card called... tarot game trick-taking game played with a tarot deck, a special pack of cards containing a fifth suit bearing miscellaneous illustrations and acting as a trump suit. The cards are known as tarots (French), Tarocks (German), tarocchi (Italian), and other variations... Trente et Quarante French “Thirty and Forty”, (“Red and Black”), French card game played at Monte- Carlo and French and Italian gambling casinos. It is not popular in North America. The name Trente et Quarante is derived from the fact that the winning point always lies...

triumph 16th-century card game ancestral to whist. In triomphe, the French variety known to English contemporaries as French ruff, each player received five cards, a trump was turned, and the aim was to win three or more tricks. From this derived écarté and... twenty-five Ireland ’s national card game, related to the classic Spanish game of ombre. It was played under the name maw by the British King James I and was later called spoil five from one of its principal objectives. From it derives the Canadian game of forty-fives.... whist trick-taking card game developed in England. The English national card game has passed through many phases of development, being first recorded as trump (1529), then ruff, ruff and honours, whisk and swabbers, whisk, and finally whist in the 18th century.... Yu-Gi-Oh! Japanese manga (comic book) of the late 20th and early 21st centuries that features an ordinary high-school student, Yugi Mutou (Yugi Moto), who assumes mystical powers when playing a mysterious card game. When blond, spiky-haired Yugi, a weak and unassuming...

RUMMY CARD GAMBLING Home | Contact Us Most card games fall into two main groups. First, the games in which certain cards are “trumps” (a corruption of the word “triumph”) and players can make “tricks.” (A trick is a collective term for the cards usually four played and won in one round.) This group includes the contract bridge and whist series of games. Second, the games in which “melding” (making specific combinations of cards) is a basic principle. These are rummy games, which include all forms of texas holdem poker. There are a number of games that combine the ideas of melding and trick making. And in a few games the object is to lose tricks. Games of the rummy series appear to be the oldest, but one has to remember that the Tarot pack had trump cards, so games involving the making of tricks may have preceded rummy games. There was a Persian rummy game of the 14th century called âs-nâs, which has been adapted by every nation without altering the structural basis of dealing a hand of five cards to each of four players.

(Poker and gin rummy are the Western world’s most popular variants of âs-nâs .) Columbus’s seamen took the game of cards from the Old World to the New (whether or not they flung their game overboard in order to change their luck) and one of them gives an account of it in a journal he kept for his wife: “After the Hail Mary at nightfall those not at watch played at cards,the card game having been showed them by sailors from Cathay… It is a game in which skill adapts to chance, each player having five cards only and these to be matched in every respect to the coat [court] cards and the as [ace].” It seems very likely that the sailors from Cathay (Cathay was the name given to the whole of the oriental empire, not just to Marco Polo’s China) had taught Columbus’s men âs-nâs. There are certainly several references to the popularity of this game in 14th century Persian literature. After the 14th and 15th centuries, references to the names of games (but not rules ) crop up quite frequently.

Primero (or primiera) was a 16th century Italian card game , and Charles IX of France played gimlet, a French version of it, during the period of his remorse after the massacre of the Huguenots in 1572 (“At Gilet this day I lost my purse, but at Saint-Barthélemy I lost my soul”). Both the French ambigu and the English brag introduced the element of bluffing (i.e., betting heavily to make it seem that your hand is stronger than it is, so as to frighten your opponents and make them concede the hand before the cards are shown); but it’s doubtful if either of these games was played before the 18th century. Brelan (or bouillotte) was a 15th century French game of the rummy kind, in which hands of three, not five, take a cards were dealt. Of the games combining the characteristics of melding and trick making, piquet is the best known.

(Kalabriasz, a game from central Europe, is probably older; bezique and pinochle belong to the same family but are considerably later.) The suggestion (quite common in early histories of gambling) that piquet is named after its inventor is absurd. The name is derived from pique, meaning to prick or nettle your opponent, and is exactly the same word that gave the name to the French suit of Pikes (Spades). The trick-losing games come in varying degrees of difficulty. Black Maria is perhaps the most complex: Each of the three players has 17 cards (the two of Clubs is omitted from the pack) and at the beginning of the game passes three of them to the player on his right, collecting three from the player on his left. play poker then proceeds by making tricks, but the object is not to win those tricks that contain penalty cards. The penalty cards are all the Hearts, (each of which counts one point against the trick winner), and the ace, king, and queen of Spades, which count seven, ten, and 13 points respectively. Greek hearts (which is sometimes shortened to hearts) and slobberhannes are slightly simpler variations on the trick-losing theme.

The games in which trick making was of principal importance seem to have been the last to arrive. One catches glimpses of details of whist-like games in the 16th century. Triumph, ruff, ombre, and honors were all built round the idea of trumping, and are all developments of ronfa, an early 16th –century Italian game in which the leading player could decide to his own advantage which should be the superior or trump suit in play. (A card from the trump suit will win a trick from any card of any other suit in play. (A card from the trump suit will win a trick from any card of any other suit.) Ronfa, like ombre, was usually a game for two. The Spanish adapted it for three and called it renegade. Ombre was the French version and became very popular in the smart set. Descartes, who began gambling when he was 17, gave up ombre after losing for 15 nights in succession and discovering that he was more interested in the mathematical probabilities that had caused his losses than the losses themselves.

And the playwright Rotrou, who wrote execrable poetry to earn money to pay gambling debts, won 400 louis at ombre one night and put the money in a bag and gave it to Corneille, his fellow playwright , to look after for him. corneille immediately sallied forth with the firm intention of turning it into 1000 louis. But the inevitable happened and he returned the empty bag with a note: “Vous n’avez pas l’ombre d’une change.” Ruff, honors (sometimes called slam), and whist were the earliest English variants of the trick-making games, and were all hugely popular by the middle of the 17th century. Ruff and honors (and later ombre) faded out, but whist – which got its name from the exclamation “Whist!” (“Hush!”) demanding silence for concentration –kept its popularity until the end of the 19th century. It was partly maintained by the boosting power of A Short Treatise on Whist by the English lawyer Edmond Hoyle, whose name as a card expert is well known even today (though not a word of his original writings remains in rule books).

More complex rules for dominoes were later foisted upon it by one Henry Jones, who called himself Cavendish and wrote innumerable treatises (Cavendish on Whist)superseding Hoyle’s and making increasing demands on the wits of those who played the game. In a more simplified form, whist today is largely played at social gathering in England and North America ( a “whist drive” is often used to raise money for churches or women’s clubs); it can no longer be called an important gambling game. Biritsch was a version of whist played in Russia, where it rivaled faro in popularity in the early part of the 19th century. The main difference was that in British the trump suit was decided by the dealer instead of by chance as in whist, where the suit of the last card to be dealt was trumps. Also the dealer’s partner became “dummy” and declared (i.e., exposed his hand) after the first trick had been made. And there was a points system of scoring that allowed doubling, tripling, and quadrupling of stakes.

Biritsch appears to have come to western Europe via Turkey; General Menshikov, the Russian ambassador in Constantinople immediately prior to the Crimean war, remarks in one of his dispatches that his only relaxation for 15 days had been a game of British, which he lost because of “the overwhelming forces of chance.” At all events, British quickly gained European ground. It reached England in 1894, and the Portland Club of London claims to have been the first to use the name “bridge” (a corruption of the original Russian name), which is today used internationally. Bridge has gone through several changes on its way to the now firmly established “contract” form. The “auction” form appeared in the Whist Club of New York in 1908. Instead of allowing the dealer to nominate trumps, auction made the suit the subject of competitive bidding. But a variation called plafond, popularized by the French expert Pierre Ballenger was quickly taken up in Europe and America and became contract bridge. Contract has superseded auction in most clubs, but auction is still played privately, especially by players who prefer not to endure the marathon of skill that is a good game of contract.

(As if contract weren’t difficult enough with the standard pack of cards, a fifth suit called “Royals,” symbolized by a crown, was added in 1938. By 1939 it had vanished.) Bitter conflict between the British, American, and French bridge authorities waged over the rules from 1925 to 1948; and at least two socialites came to public blows (Westminster Gazette headline: “Fisticuffers Confound Culbertson”) over the Culbertson “conventions.” (Culbertson was one of the world’s acknowledged bridge experts, and the one to whom modern players owe most for the development of the rules that are now internationally accepted.) Today contract bridge holds its top popularity among the games in which great skill is combined with a relatively small element of chance- which by no means implies that gambling on bridge is equally small. An Australian club owner. I know estimated that Melbourne and Sydney turn over the equivalent of $ 300,000 nightly at the bridge tables. And an American authority has estimated that about $ 1,000,000,000 are bet annually on bridge in the U.S.A.

Piquet, pinochle, kalabriasz, bezique, and cribbage are also tests of Gamed game people play of skill in which players make tricks, meld, and claim points for their successes. The skill in all these games lies in memorizing the cards played, sensing the speed of the game, making the right decisions on the declaring of winning card hands, and reckoning the scores and sacrifices it is best to make at the appropriate times. Piquet has kept its aristocratic and French terminology. In the version for two players, the complete of six deals is a “partie,” the players are “younger hand” (who deals) and “elder hand” (who discards), and the scoring sequences of cards are Tierce, Quart, Quaint, Sixiéme, and Huitième. Pinochle (the word is a corruption of the French binocle: binocular) is especially popular nowadays in Switzerland (where it originated) and in America (where it was taken by 19th century emigrants). But it has a very small following elsewhere under that name.

It is played (usually by two, three, or four players) with a 48-card pack and the scoring and betting is by points; the combination of the queen of Spades and the jack of Diamonds is called “pinochle” and is worth 40 points. Bezique is the more widely played version of pinochle, with a big following in Britain, parts of the Commonwealth, and France. It requires 64 cards and is usually played by two players. Like pinochle, it is a game of considerable skill, and, though played for money, makes its principal appeal to those wishing to exercise their poker brains with figures. Again, tricks and melds score varying numbers of points and the first player to score a predetermined number wins. Piquet: historic card game described by David Parlett French or Spanish? Piquet has always "Husband, shall we play at Saunt?" been regarded as the national game of France, even as an emblem of French patriotism.

As Chatto puts it: It would seem that the French consider the invention of Piquet as a national point of honour, and that the native author who should call it into question would render himself liable to a suspicion of incivism. Stories invented to account for its origin and significance range from the picturesque to the ludicrous. You can safely ignore anything referring to the French mathematician Picquet, or a ballet performed at the court of a French king, or Père Daniel's Mémoire sur l'origine du jeu de piquet (1720). Later clerics who enquired into its origins include the Abbé Bullet, a Celtic scholar who delighted in deriving every unexplained technical term in the game (and a few explained ones) from Celtic roots, and Père Menestrier, who relates suit symbols to social stratification. Court cards, he says, represent the nobility, hearts the ecclesiastics, their place being in the c(h)œur, (= choir). Pikes (spades) represent the nobility, carreaux (paving-tiles, i.e. diamonds) the bourgeoisie, and trefoils (clover, i.e. clubs) the peasantry.

Piquet is known from the early 16th century, but for most of that century under the name Cent, from its target score of 100 points. It appears as such in the celebrated list of games played by Gargantua , the literary giant created by Rabelais in 1534, and in England is referenced two years earlier under the spelling Saunt. Of Cent in this sense, the Oxford English Dictionary says: "Called cent, because 100 was the game" (Nares). If so, the word is, originally, the same as cent n.1, but probably taken independently from some Romanic lang[uage]. Juego de los cientos, i.e. "hundred-game", is the Spanish name of piquet [...] 1. [1] An old game at cards, said to have been of Spanish origin, and to have resembled piquet, with one hundred as the point that won the game. (See Nares, and Singer Hist. Playing Cards 267.) Nares denotes Robert Nares, the author of Nares' Glossary (1822), once described as "indispensable to readers of Elizabethan literature".

Singer references Samuel Weller Singer , author of Researches into the History of Playing-Cards (1816), who calls upon the game of Cientos and adds As this game was of Spanish original, and has some appearance of having resembled Piquet [...] may not the French have adopted it, with some alterations, merely changing its name? Cavendish wanders even further off the track by commenting: Singer assumes that the game originated in Spain. It is more probable that Cientos was a modified Italian game, possibly Ronfa, with a change of name. All of which is very interesting, but, since everyone seems to be copying everyone else, does not, to my mind, greatly support, let alone strengthen, the argument for a Spanish origin. Certainly Los Cientos occurs in Spanish literature of the 16th century, but precious little is known about it. As Depaulis says: What is frustrating is that no early Spanish dictionary (Covarrubias 1611; Autoridades 1729) has a word on the rules and on the number of cards used. Covarrubias says that todo lo conosco [everyone knows it]; Autoridades ignores it (!).

The 1780 edition of the Dictionary of the Real Academia has at last a description that says that, from a common pack (i.e. of 40 cards), one takes out the threes and the sixes, so making 32, keeping the 7s, 5s, 4s and 2s... The point values are also strange. According to Singer, the Spanish poet Moreto, quoted by Pellier in his notes on Don Quixote, mentions this game and primero in the following lines: Y si à otro juego tè metes A los Cientos te dan sietes Y a la Primera figuras. The Gargantuan roll-call also includes "Picquet", but much further down the list, in the section on action games rather than in the opening section devoted to card games. Only towards the end of the 16th century does this name start being applied to Cent/Saunt, its first French occurrence being in 1595 in the compound form Picquet-Capot , possibly to distinguish it from some other game such as that mentioned by Rabelais.

Yet a third entry in Rabelais' list, namely Ronfle, may have contributed to Piquet. Like "capot", ronfle is a prominent feature of the game, namely that now referred to as the "point", that is, the suit in which one holds the highest total card-point value. The English derivative of "ronfle" is "ruff". Although this now means to win a plain-suit lead by playing a trump, its earlier meaning was to discard unwanted cards and draw replacements with a view to forming point-scoring combinations - equivalent to the draw in Draw Poker. This name is particularly interesting, as it occurs as an entry in a French list of card games as early as 1454. (Not 1414 as per Dummett p.182.) It seems very probably equivalent to its contemporary, the Italian game of Ronfa, in which players vied or bragged as to who held the highest-valued flush. Could Piquet go back to the 15th century?

The very fact that it is a trick-taking game without trumps tantalisingly suggests such a possibility, since the idea of designating one suit as trump did not arise much before the end of that period. Nevertheless, several other features suggest that it cannot be much older than about 1500. For example: The earliest version was played with a 36-card pack, which did not come into general use until about that time. Aces outrank Kings. This promotion also dates from the end of the 15th century, though it is interesting (and confusing) to note that the closely related game of Impériale ranks Ace intermediately, between Jack and Ten, as if caught in the process of migrating from low to high position. The valuation of cards at Ace 11, courts 10, and numerals at face value, is not recorded before 1500. To reconcile these contradictions I can only speculate that a similar game was played in the 15th century with all 52 cards, but did not realise its full potential until the pack was reduced to thirty-six. Whether or not such an ancestor can be identified with Ronfle remains an open question.

A TEXT-BOOK CLASSIC Hoyle's ancestors An encyclopedic book of games containing instructions on how to play them seems such an obvious necessity of everyday life that it is hard to believe there was ever a card-playing time when no such thing existed, so it is mildly surprising to find that such things did not appear in Europe until the mid-seventeenth century, some 300 years after the appearance of cards themselves. Before that, true folk games were played by truly illiterate folk, while those of the literate classes were simply picked up like any other social accomplishment. The first such book in English was Cotton's The Compleat Gamester (1674), much of which its author plagiarised from a chapter in the second edition of Cotgrave's Wits Interpreter (1662) entitled "Games and Sports now used at this day among the gentry of England", covering l'Ombre (that "noble Spanish game"), Picket ("ingenious"), Gleek ("noble and delightful"), Cribbidge ("gentile" [sic]), and "the Princely Game of Chesse".

Both publications were preceded by (and plagiarised from) exemplars published in France, notably Denis La Marinière's La maison académique, a "general collection of games", with instructions in Piquet, Hoc, Tric-Trac, Billiards, and the Royal Game of Goose, published at Paris in 1654. Subsequent editions - at least five by 1700, and retitled La maison des jeux académique, later l'Académie des Jeux - considerably expand the text and form a tradition lasting well into the 19th century. Piquet not only holds pride of place in most of these publications, but may be seen to have initiated them, for all were preceded by individual treatises on the game. La Maison Académique itself incorporated the text of Le Ieu du Picquet (Paris, 1631), republished as Le Royal Ieu du Piquet plaisant et recreatif (Rouen, 1647); and Cotgrave's description of Piquet is in fact based on an anonymous translation of the latter entitled "The royal and delightfull game of Piquet" (1651).

The oldest known game description, however, comes not from a French but from a German text written about 1620 by Prince August D. J. von Braunschweig-Lüneburg under the pen-name Gustavus Selenus , perhaps better known for his treatise on Chess. (See Manfred Zollinger, Der Fürst und das Kartenspiel: Piquet-Regeln, in "The Playing-Card", 31-3 (Nov/Dec 2002), pp 104-112.) The following essential features of the game, though probably varying in minor details from place to place, accord with French descriptions following shortly afterwards: It was played with 36 cards, including sixes. A deal of 12 each left a stock of twelve, of which Elder could draw from one to eight cards and Younger up to as many as remained. The scoring of points for leading to a trick and for capturing the lead applied at this time only to tricks containing aces, courts and tens (we might call them honours).

You scored nothing for leading a lower numeral, or for gaining the lead by capturing one with another; nor did you score an additional point for the last trick if it contained no honour. The score for point was not 1 per card but 1 for every 10 card-points constituting the point, minus 1 if the point total ended in 4 or less. For example, a five-card point scored 5 if it totalled from 45 (e.g. 7-8-J-Q-K) to 51 (10-J-Q-K-A), but 4 if from only 40 (e.g. 6-7-8-9.10) to 44 (e.g. 6-7-J-Q-K). When the 36-card pack was shortened to 32 (around 1700), points ending in 2 and 3 became impossible. A point of five - the commonest number - would, therefore, hardly ever be worth less than 45, and would virtually never be "good" if it did, rendering a score of 4 so rare and anomalous as to be easily forgotten.

Many players must have been led to automatically assume that the score was actually 1 per card, so it would be hardly surprising if the change to that more rational system should have occurred almost without thought, and accepted unquestioningly by all but a few die-hard pedants. CENT (SAUNT) IN ENGLAND First mentioned 1532 In his Treatise on Piquet (9th edition, 1896), on which I draw extensively below, Cavendish traces the progress of Piquet in England by expanding on literary references to the game recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary. The earliest of these are in fact to its earlier title Cent, also spelt Saint, Saunt, etc, and sometimes inexplicably preceded by "Mount-". The first known reference is in a tract of 1532 ascribed to Gilbert Walker: After the table was removed, in came one of the waiters with a fair silver bowl, full of dice and cards... Then each man choose his game... Because I alleged ignorance [of dice]... we fell to Saunt, five games a crown. As Cavendish points out, this looks as though the stake was on the old-fashioned partie, best of five games.

Another early reference is to be met with in Turberville's Book of Faulconrie (1575): At coses or at Saunt to sit, Or set their rest at prime (Prime = Primero.) In the Book of Howshold Charges and other Paiments laid out by the L[ord] North and his Commandement (Nichol's "Progresses of Queen Elizabeth"), there are several entries of the kind "Lost at Saint, xv.s[hillings]" (1578, May 15 to 17). In 1577, Lord Northbrooke writes in A Treatise, wherein Dicing, Dancing, Vaine Plaies or Enterludes are reprooved: What is a man now a daies if he knows not... To plaie... at Cardes, Dice, &c., Post, Cente, Gleke or such other games? In Minsheu's Pleasant and delightfull Dialogues, Spanish and English (1599) the game is also called Mount Sant. In the third Dialogue between "five gentlemen friendes", Rodricke, Sir Lorenzo and Mendoza converse thus: R. Here are the cards. What shall we play at?

[...] L. At Mount Sant. M. It makes my head to be in a swoune to be alwaies Counting. Thomas Heywood's play A Woman kilde with Kindnesse (pre-1604) contains the line "Husband, shall we play at Saint?"; and in Gervas Markham's Famous or Noble Curtezan (1609) occurs: Were it Mount-cent, primero, or at chesse, I wan with most, and lost still with the lesse. Brewer's Lingua, or the Combat of the Tongue and five Senses(1607) has "As for Memory, he's a false hearted fellow, he always deceives them; they respect not him, except it be to play a Game at Chests, Primero, Saunt, Maw, or such like.". More extensively, a game of "Mount-Saint" depicted in Machin's The Dumb Knight (1608) mingles technical terminology with the language of love: Queen: Come, my Lord, take your place, here are cards, and here are my crowns.

Phylocles: And here are mine; at what game will your Majesty play? Q. At Mount-Saint. P. A royal game, and worthy of the name / And meetest even for Saints to exercise; / Sure it was of a woman's first invention. Q. It is not Saint, but Cent, taken from hundreds. P. True, for 'mongst millions hardly is found one saint. Q. Indeed you may allow a double game. But come, lift for the dealing: it is my chance to deal. P. An action most, most proper to your sex. [...] Q. What are you, my Lord? P. Your Highness' servant but misfortune's slave. Q. Your game, I mean. P. Nothing in show, yet somewhat in account; Madam, I am blank. Q. You are a double game, and I am no less. There's an hundred, and all cards made but one knave. [...] What's your game now? P. Four king's [sic], as I imagine. Q. Nay, I have two, yet one doth me little good. P. Indeed, mine are two queens, and one I'll throw away.

[...] Can you decard, madam? Q. Hardly, but I must do hurt. Here (says Cavendish) the mention of showing, of the blank (carte blanche), of double games (counted in the old fashioned partie), of four kings, of throwing away, and of the decard (discard) prove conclusively the likeness of the two games. In 1621 Taylor's Motto enumerates among the games at which the prodigal "flings his money free with carelessnesse... Ruffe, Slam, Trump, Nody, Whisk, Hole, Sant, New Cut." CENT BECOMES PIQUET And settles down under its new name Cent was occasionally called "Hundred" in the 17th century (the OED gives two citations). The first reference to Piquet as such comes from J. Hall, Horae Vacivae (1646) just five years before the appearance of "The Royall and Delightful Game of Piquet" mentioned above: For Cardes...

a mans fancy would be sum'd up in cribbidge; Glecke requires a vigilant memory; Maw a pregnant agility; Picket [printed Pichet] a various invention. Thereafter Piquet is the usual name and occurs regularly, often with pride of place, in subsequent editions and spin-offs of Cotton's Compleat Gamester. Cavendish explains the switch from Cent to Piquet thus: From the time of the marriage of Mary with Philip of Spain (1554), the English equivalent of the Spanish name of the game was in vogue. In 1625, Charles I married the daughter of Henry IV of France. When a French Princess came on the scene the French name, Piquet, was contemporaneously substituted for the Spanish name. Piquet remained the foremost game for two throughout the 18th century, eclipsing even Cribbage, which had gone down-market since the days when "good King" Charles (II) would complain of having ill luck at the game with Harry Bennet. Edmond Hoyle, following the success of his Short Treatise on Whist in 1743, turned his attention similarly to Piquet in the following year.

One of the principal centres of card-play in general and Piquet in particular was at Bath, where heavy sums were won and lost, as well by the bystanders as the players. It is equally prominent in the 19th century, with references in minor as well as major authors such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. It was towards the end of the century that the older game of Piquet au Cent, or Hundred Up Piquet, was replaced by the new structure designated Rubicon Piquet. Official and authoritative rules for Rubicon were drafted by Cavendish and others in 1873, being commissioned, endorsed and published by the Portland and Turf Clubs of London. These rules continue to be regarded as standard to this day, and the game remains in all substantial anthologies, despite its fall from favour between the two world wars. Thanks to Thierry Depaulis for his helpful comments. Click here for Rules of Piquet

Question: What card game was derived from the 16th century Italian game called "ronfa"?
Answer: Piquet