![]() the most popular of these included games like:Ĭhuck a luck is played with three large six-sided dice. Gambling in the late 19th century wasn’t limited to card games. It can be played as a fair game, but most people now think of it as a game where the dealer is a card sharp and using sleight of hand to make it impossible to win. The dealer has three cards, and the player is supposed to follow their card face down while the dealer mixes the three cards up in plain sight. Three card monte is still played on the streets in certain cities, but most people understand that it’s a con game. Another betting option is “high card”, which is a bet that the player’s card would be of higher rank than the dealer’s. Players who bet on the dealer’s rank lose their bet, while players who bet on the player’s card get paid off. The dealer draws two cards–the player’s card and the dealer’s card. Players bet on the ranking of a card, but only two cards are used–the ace and the king. Three other notable card games were popular during this time period:īrag is similar to poker, but it’s played with only three cards.įaro is a house-banked game. You’ve heard of a dead man’s hand? That’s the hand legend says Hickok was holding when he was killed. It’s also the game Wild Bill Hickok was playing when he got killed. This was the game Doc Holliday was known to play. The rules were similar to our modern game of five card draw, jacks or better. There was no such thing as a straight flush–any flush, because of the limited number of cards in the deck, was automatically a straight flush (in fact, a royal flush), but since there were no cards lower than ten in the deck, there was nothing to differentiate.Ī game called “Jackpots” was also popular. Now we would call those hands “a full house” or “three of a kind” respectively. A player might have a “full” or “triplets”. Hand rankings were different, too–at least they had different names. You played the hand you got–there was no drawing. Only four players played at a time, and all 20 cards were dealt out, five to each player. A deck of cards consisted of only 20 cards in 4 different suites–the ace, king, queen, jack, and ten were the only cards in the deck. They used a different deck of cards, and the rules were different, too. The games were much simpler, and almost all of them were what we would consider stud variations. In lawless areas like that, disputes over cheating could turn deadly quickly. It’s hard to even hear names like Doc Holliday or Calamity Jane without picturing a card game at a saloon in Deadwood or Tombstone. But other frontier towns also had lots of lawlessness and plenty of gambling. In the middle of the 19th century, the largest gambling destination in the United States was San Francisco. I saw it as an opportunity to create a new and interesting post on my blog. I used to link to a page about which poker games and card games were actually played in the Wild West from my links page, but the site took that content down. ![]() Scenes like that are a staple of the genre–maybe a little bit less so in some of the more prominent spaghetti westerns, but a staple nonetheless. You’ve probably seen plenty of examples of people playing poker games and other card games in the Old West.
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