A Slight Look Into the Game of Pai Gow Poker

The video game of Pai Gow Poker is considered as the Western type of the primordial Chinese video game Pai Gow. From the China version of Pai Gow unique dice and dominos are widely-used to participate in the activity.

It happens to be assumed to be a tricky activity that lacks agility. Subsequently, it turned out to be popular for a community sport and failed to become well-known just outside of Asia. On the flip side, Pai Gow Poker features the traditional China version as well as the traditional Western poker online game.

It absolutely was the entire year 1986 whenever the sport Pai Gow Poker was presented into on the list of Vegas gambling houses. So, it really is however a new video game in comparison with other models of poker game titles and various other on line casino computer games.

Having said that, its reputation has considerably elevated within the last decade, specially the place internet poker engage in is involved, and this stream in on the internet global recognition is primarily on account of progression in engineering that provides a graphically pleasant and exact on-line representation.

So that you can perform Pai Gow poker, you might need a common outdoor patio of 53 credit cards, including the Joker as well. The positioning of charge cards is just like precisely what is evident in regular poke.

Really the only exclusion that you will discover is the fact that combined Joker and three Aces is graded being the highest possible. The leading aim is to utilize seven spread credit cards to create two hands and wrists that can defeat the 2 hands and wrists of dealership.

An remarkable part of Pai Gow Poker will be the convenience which enables any competitor to always be the banker from the sport. During these moments, people make a comparing of their own arms towards the participant-banker as opposed to the supplier.

The individual-banker end up being the victor of the ties, accumulates burning off wagers, and pays off out victors from his/her very own pants pocket. In cases like this, the banker accumulates a 5 pct charge on any receiving palm.

Inside the bet on Pai Gow Poker, the poker residence likes an edge of 2.5 per-cent; having said that, the body gets almost regardless of whether a individual ends up being the banker.

You simply will not decide considerably dissimilarity involving the on-line release of Pai Gow Poker and then in the brick-and-mortar type. In the matter of online Pai Gow poker, a individual is participating in by itself on his/her computer.

But, in the terrain primarily based gambling houses you will definitely be coupled with 5 or 6 competitors on the Pai Gow dining room table.

The Royal Baccarat Scandal At Tranby Croft

While reading about the life of Britain’s King Edward VII, I encountered a scandal that he was involved in prior to his ascension to the throne, while he was still Prince of Wales, in 1890. A close friend of his, Sir William Gordon-Cumming, was caught cheating during a baccarat game at a weekend party held at Tranby Croft, the home and aristocratic seat of titled shipping magnate Arthur Wilson, who (along with his wife) hosted the party.

After having been caught cheating, Gordon-Cumming was forced to sign a confession, agreeing never to play cards again in exchange for the silence of the guests regarding his cheating. When a girlfriend of the Prince of Wales let the story leak, Gordon-Cumming sued several of the witnesses, including His Highness, the Prince. This created a scandal for two reasons: one, baccarat was illegal and the Prince had been dealing and banking the game, and, two, both the Prince of Wales and Gordon-Cumming were officers in the British Army, and, as such, the Prince was legally obligated to report illegal conduct by his fellow officer Gordon-Cumming to their superiors, but had not done so. The whole affair left me with one searing question in my mind: How exactly does one cheat at baccarat?

Turns out that it was stack-capping. In a game where there is absolutely no reason to ever reach over the betting area. And, predictably, everyone noticed. From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography‘s entry on “Cumming, Sir William Gordon Gordon-, fourth baronet (1848–1930), disgraced socialite”:

Throughout the evening, several players observed Mister William apparently cheating by altering the quantity of the bets he'd up for grabs after he won some loot a hands. Alerted for this, they viewed him more carefully the following evening and confirmed his actions. Sir William won as many as £228 throughout the 2 days of playing.

Incidentally, in spite of obviously having signed a pledge to never play cards again immediately after getting caught, I note that the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that Gordon-Cumming spent much of his forced retirement playing contract bridge. Implying that somebody, somewhere, was willing to play cards with him for money. Crazy things happen.

I was very impressed to discover that a group-portrait photograph existed of all of the people who had been present when Gordon-Cumming was caught cheating. This is a truly remarkable photo. I assume that the photo must have been taken on the evening in question, most or all of the participants probably afterwards being more interested in distancing themselves from the matter than posing for commemorative photographs. Further, the Prince of Wales testified that he had not seen Gordon-Cumming since the incident, and did not “think it agreeable” that he should ever have to encounter the latter again, whereas in the photo, they are noticeably seated together.

(This incidentally begs the question - how many of these big antique group photos that we see and assume to have been family portraits were simply intended to commemorate something as mundane as a card game? Anyhow, the handwritten captioning was almost certainly post-scandal, as there would seem to be no other reason for only Gordon-Cumming and the Prince having their names underlined.)

My initial thought had been that the ladies present in the photo would not have been participants in the game, but I’ve now seen trial testimony that at least two of them personally witnessed him stack-capping (whereas the Prince, dealing, did not). The painting I’ve included at the top of this post has ladies participating in the game, too. I found a wonderful contemporary news account of some of the trial testimony, which the captioned photograph made a nice companion to.

The Prince mentions that at one point during the game, he had to tell Gordon-Cumming to move his hands so that he (acting as banker) could see Gordon-Cumming’s bet. That alone suggests that Gordon-Cumming was acting strangely as far as his hands and chips were concerned. (I am guessing that this game must have been played with chips, or “counters”, given their popularity with the British upper classes at the time, especially fancy ones made from ivory, mother of pearl, or bakelite - cheap chips were made from bone.)

In one of those moments that only happen in movies and on TV, as one of the lawyers was asking the Prince a question, one of the jurors stood up and loudly demanded to know whether the jury was to understand that the Prince, banking and dealing the game, did not notice Gordon-Cumming’s furtive movements. After pausing for a moment to consider whether providing any response would be appropriate, the Prince smiled and admitted that he might have missed a great deal, so unsuspecting he was of the possibility of cheating amongst highbrow friends.

The NYT piece also includes an excellent, and impressively laconic, primer on both baccarat and chemin de fer (and makes it clear that it was the former that was being played at Tranby Croft) - much more brief and digestible than the one that Ian Fleming included in the unabridged version of the novel Casino Royale. Much has been written about the director of the new film’s dodge in that regard - rather than having to explain the game to the audience, just make them play poker. Everyone understands poker. That the entire scene comes off as jaw-droppingly improbable could possibly have been avoided by moving the Monte Carlo-doppelgänger setting and removing the tuxedos. Sure, you’re messing with an awful lot there, but, then, changing the game that the entire plot revolves around is already taking some pretty blatant liberties.

Anyhow, now we know how Gordon-Cumming cheated at baccarat, although whether stack-capping is cheating at cards or simply outright fraud might be worthy of some debate. Although the Prince’s testimony made it clear that the Prince believed it to be decidedly the former, really, Gordon-Cumming didn’t interfere with the game in any way; he simply misrepresented the amounts of money owed to and by him after hands had been played out. But, then, if we follow this to its logical conclusion, only the dealers and the player holding the shoe are actually “playing baccarat”, and the other players are just disinterested observers betting on how the game is gonna go. Unless, of course, they insist on bending and tearing up the cards; then they’re actually playing the game by participating in one of its many pointless rituals.

At this point I am quite certain that I have given Gordon-Cumming far more thought than any dead toff is probably worth. But I’m left with something of a dilemma regarding how to think about him. He’s either a weaselly card cheat and product of a strange subculture that was incredibly big on setting abstract concepts into stone, or remarkably admirable for going down with the ship the way that he did. I mean, here’s the situation: Daisy Brook truthfully babbles that Gordon-Cumming pastposted his bets. Gordon-Cumming responds by suing half a dozen witnesses to his cheating (not just the ones whose signatures were on the document) for defamation, knowing full well that evidence of his guilt existed in his own handwriting. That’s sticking with your story right there.

Epilogue: Gordon-Cumming’s suit was dismissed as being without merit. The next day, he was married to a woman who then assumed the responsibility of paying his bills. Gordon-Cumming referred to her as “the fat little frump” and she never missed an opportunity to remind him that she was the household’s sole source of income (a massive humiliation in the circles in which Gordon-Cumming had once travelled) and that it was she who paid his bills, especially if company was present. The Prince of Wales went on to be King of England and Arthur Wilson died of consumption shortly thereafter. Daisy Brook became known to history by the wonderful epithet, “The Babbling Brook”.

Historic Games of Chance : Faro

Faro is a wonderful game that, after dominating the world of wagering games for over a century, has sadly all but disappeared. My understanding is that cheating by dealers and use of gaffed (rigged) equipment had become so common that nobody was willing to put down money on it anymore. The last few faro tables in Las Vegas disappeared in the 1980s.

A layout is used, with one of each card from a single suit (generally spades) glued to it or otherwise represented on it, as in the photo at right. One card is dealt to the player and one to the banker, as in baccarat, except that it’s only one card each. Bets placed on or near the card dealt to the player win; bets placed on or near the card dealt to the banker lose, unless they have been “coppered” by having a small (usually) copper token placed on top of them, making them essentially bets for the banker, in which case they also win.

Card counting is built into the game, and takes the form of an abacus-like device called a case keeper (also seen in the photo), which is used to identify which cards have already been dealt out of the single deck used for the game. (Incidentally, if this idea is particularly appealing to you, allow me to strongly recommend using that silly scorecard that they provide in baccarat to keep track of which cards have been dealt out of the shoe. Although, of course, this gets you only halfway there — you would then need to determine a way to utilize that information in a game where a hand consists of two to three cards and nobody can bust and face cards mean nothing.)

If the dealer drew two cards of the same rank (a “doublet”), he took half the stake placed on or near that card on the layout. This was the game’s only source of house edge, another reason for casinos phasing it out. I saw an article where a casino executive said that he could make more money by having any other game occupying the space taken up by a faro table.

For lack of “real”, live faro games available, I’ve tried a few different electronic faro games recently. I got Reel Deal’s Gold Rush casino game only because it included faro. Its faro game wasn’t bad, although the case keeper being built into the layout was kind of strange. Everybody gets their own single color for their chips, like in roulette. The human player always gets purple (other colors are played by bots). Bets can be coppered and all of the essentials of the game are there. This is more than I can say for either their baccarat or dragon bonus baccarat games, which will only allow you to bet on the player or banker or tie, never player or banker and tie — in the Reel Deal version of baccarat, you can only place one bet on the layout at a time, so forget about using the tie bet as a hedge.

I do really really like the stats provided in the lower left-hand corner by Reel Deal, showing number of games played, won, and lost, amounts of money wagered, won, and lost, and percentage return on bets. I really wish that the superior Hoyle casino games included this feature. It would be so much more useful than the box Hoyle provides in that space, which tells you when the bots are thinking. Seriously. That’s all it does.

I discovered a free flash faro game that I like a lot better than Reel Deal’s. It’s called Wichita Faro, and includes an optional tutorial for those unfamiliar with the game. I like the graphics much better than Reel Deal’s, and the case keeper especially looks cool. So this one gets my vote as far as electronic faro games are concerned. Although, I’ve also discovered, but haven’t tried, Arizona Faro, which is a free download that, again, I haven’t tried, and therefore can’t vouch for. From the screenshots, I’d say that Wichita Faro is still probably your best bet. You can play Wichita Faro for free here.

Remarkably, Wichita Faro even manages to outdo Reel Deal on the Old West theme, which is what Reel Deal was going for in Gold Rush. (I especially liked the antique cards.) The dealer’s voice is funny and not used frequently enough to be annoying. I really like the game and, until someone can point me at a live faro bank, it’s the faro game that I recommend.