Faro

By George Self

Introduction

Sepia-toned historical photograph of a crowded saloon in the Old West. Several men are gathered around a gaming table, playing faro or a similar card game. The players and onlookers wear typical late 19th-century attire, including cowboy hats, vests, and button-up shirts. The scene captures the atmosphere of a bustling frontier gambling hall.

Faro was one of the most popular gambling games in early Tombstone and nearly anywhere else in the United States in the late 1800s. It was popular, undoubtedly, because it was effortless to learn, and players did not need any skill. The game was also very fast-paced, so players would have a constant rush of energy as they placed their bets. Finally, Faro has about the best odds for the player of any gambling game (if cheating is controlled), so players would at least occasionally "win."

The Game

Faro was often called "bucking the tiger" or "twisting the tiger's tail" since the early card decks featured a drawing of a Bengal tiger. At one point, the game was so popular that saloons would advertise it with nothing more than a drawing of a tiger in the front window.

Faro was a game of chance between the "bank" (or house) and one or more "punters" (or players). It was played with a single deck of cards on an oval table with a layout of cards glued to its surface. Punters would bet by placing their "check" (a chip) on one of the cards. Then, the banker (dealer) would turn up two cards from the deck. The first was the "banker's card," and the banker kept any checks placed on that card. The second was the "player's card," and any checks placed on that card were increased by the banker one-for-one (even money) and retained by the punter. In Faro, the suit did not matter.

Diagram of a faro table layout. The image shows 13 playing cards arranged in two rows. The top row contains three face cards (King, Queen, Jack) followed by four cards showing 7 of spades. The bottom row has six cards showing spades from Ace to 6. A single 7 of spades is offset to the right. The caption below reads 'THE LAY-OUT.'

There were only a few exceptions to the play. The first card in a freshly shuffled deck was called the "soda" and discarded, leaving 51 cards. Also, the betting changed when only three cards remained in the deck. The banker would "call the turn," and punters would bet on the exact order of the last three cards. The dealer's card, player's card, and final unused card (called the "hock") would be turned, and players who correctly guessed the order of the last three cards won four-to-one.

A "casekeep" was used at the table to assist the punters. A casekeep was similar to an abacus, and someone (the "casekeeper," or more colorfully, the "coffin driver") would move a bead that indicated which card was displayed on every roll. This way, punters would know what cards had already been played and what remained in the deck.

There were two other special rules. Punters could place their check between two cards to play both at one time. Also, punters could place a "copper" (a penny) on top of their bet to indicate that they wanted to reverse the two cards, so the banker's card became a winner while the player's card was a loser. Like everything else about the game of Faro, these rules were easy to learn and apply.

Final Notes

In Tombstone at the boom’s height, faro was not merely a pastime. By 1882 the town counted 14 faro banks that never closed, and gambling was ranked second only to mining as the community’s chief business. The Town Council set the quarterly gambling license at $500, compared to $3 to $7 per month for a bar room, a fee that reflected the revenues a successful faro bank could generate.

Unfortunately, it was stunningly easy to cheat in Faro. The banker could manipulate the table to increase the odds for the house considerably. Even clever punters could cheat by moving their bets around on the table while the banker was distracted. Finally, the casekeeper, who was supposed to be independent of the banker, could work out an "under the table" arrangement that was very profitable for both men. Cheating in Faro was so prevalent that one edition of Hoyle’s Rules of Games warned that there was no single honest Faro game in the United States.

In the saloons around Tombstone, a Faro table would be noisy and exciting. A man could enter or exit a game at any time, and it did not matter how many were playing. For a miner who had a few dollars in his pocket, a Faro table was almost irresistible, and many men quickly lost their wages. At least one shooting erupted directly from a faro dispute when Luke Short, a professional gambler dealing faro at the Oriental Saloon, killed fellow gambler Charlie Storms in February 1881.

Among those dealing faro in Tombstone were two of its most famous residents. Wyatt Earp held a gambling concession interest in the Oriental Saloon and dealt faro there during the early 1880s. Doc Holliday had trained as a dentist in Philadelphia but abandoned the profession when tuberculosis made it impractical; he drifted west dealing faro to survive, and it was, by his own account, his occupation. Players in Tombstone learned to be choosy about their table: the Oriental had a reputation for crooked games, while the Crystal Palace was considered “on the square.”

Even the earth itself was not above disrupting a faro game. On the evening of the May 1887 earthquake, after the tremors had subsided and players had returned to the tables at the Crystal Palace, a man known as “Pinkey” threw a pound of bird shot against the saloon walls. The clatter sent players and spectators scrambling for the doors in a second panic, convinced the shaking had resumed. Faro was one of the most constant facets of early Tombstone.

Faro was only part of a larger gambling culture. Keno, a lottery-style game using numbered balls and cards, was equally prevalent. Bob Winders, a former Texas ranger, arrived in Tombstone in October 1879 with a keno operation and was among the first members of the gambling fraternity. Not all of Tombstone's gamblers were what they appeared to be: Fred Dodge, known publicly as a professional gambler and a regular face at the tables, was in fact an undercover detective for Wells Fargo gathering intelligence on criminal activity. His gambling associates included Charley Smith and Turkey Creek Jack Johnson, who also participated in law enforcement actions alongside the Earps. The overlap between Tombstone's gambling world and its law enforcement was, by any measure, substantial.

That gambling community also contributed to the town's civic life in ways that surprised observers from the East. When Endicott Peabody set out to build St. Paul's Episcopal Church in 1882, E. B. Gage counted $150 from his poker chip pile and the other players followed. The Ladies' Aid Society record book shows that saloons sold the largest blocks of tickets to benefit operas and bazaars. Peabody passed the collection plate at the Oriental Saloon for a churchyard fence and, as Allie Earp recalled, it "was soon filled to overflowing." The oldest Episcopal church in Arizona was funded, in considerable part, by the men who dealt and played faro and keno on Allen Street.

Sources

  • “If You Go, You Must Dress Up” (Underhill 2016), Journal of Arizona History, vol. 57, no. 3. Source for gambling scale (14 faro banks, gambling as chief industry, $500 quarterly license) and faro culture in Tombstone saloons.
  • W. M. Love, History of Tombstone to 1887 (1933). Source for Earp’s gambling concession at the Oriental Saloon and the saloons’ respective reputations.
  • Palmquist, Robert F. “Mining, Keno, and the Law: The Tombstone Careers of Bob Winders, Charley Smith, and Fred Dodge, 1879–1888.” Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer 1997), pp. 135–154. Arizona Historical Society. [Source for keno operations, Winders’ arrival, and Fred Dodge’s undercover role.]
  • Walker, Henry P. “Preacher in Helldorado.” Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Autumn 1974), pp. 223–248. Arizona Historical Society. [Source for gambling proceeds funding St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.]