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Historical Title: The Truth About 19th Century Western Saloon Gambling The Truth About 19th Century Western Saloon Gambling By Marshal M.T. Hotherp In looking at your old movies and TV shows about my time I find that your century sees saloon gambling as one continuous poker game played to the background music of a honky tonk piano until the shootin’ starts. The truth about Saloon Gambling in the 19th Century however is quite different from what those movies show however. In our day Saloons were pretty much like the casino gambling palaces of today offering several games of chance revolving around playing cards, dice, and wheels of fortune. In most places even more complex games like roulette had to be played in the wheel of fortune format because most traveling gamesters and saloon keepers could not afford the precision ball and wheel device that the game was played with on the east coast and in Europe at the time. Also the game often had to be dismantled quickly and moved from a saloon in a ghost town to one in a boom town and genuine Roulette was not conducive to this. Another fact about what you might call casino gambling in my time was often the house was NOT the saloon itself but rather the Saloon rented space to game operators that called themselves “banks” because they were the ones who “banked” or supplied the money to be wagered against in the game. The rent was in the form of a percentage of every successful or winning “bank”. A popular name for saloons that featured gambling as well as drinking at the time was gambling “hells”, a name made largely by preachers based on the supposed sinful nature of gambling pastimes that came to be taken on by the traveling professional gamblers and “banks” themselves for such saloons. Another thing I tend to see a lot of in these movies and television shows was the use of early “wheel of fortune” type slot machines in gambling saloon backgrounds. This is another untruthful aspect of saloon gambling in my time. While there were some counter top games that pretty much matched the floor-table games at the time true slots did not make their appearance until the late 1890s and early 1900s, decades in the future removed from the cattle drive era of 1866-1885 when saloon gambling was at its high water mark. The closest thing to a slot machine we had were counter top chuck a luck, and wheels of fortune and a coin pitch game where you tried to pitch coins into holes in the game at a certain distance from the game for payoffs from the saloon or the game operator. This coin pitch game is one that is NEVER depicted in your Western movies. Probably the most often played saloon casino type game of the trail drive/mining camp era was Faro all this poker business in the those movies aside. When you think of Faro think of a game of Wheel of Fortune or Roulette that was played with a card deck rather than a wheel. It also had some features of your modern craps game in that bets were not always settled by a single turn but sometimes went five or six turns before ultimate settlement. The basic equipment for Faro, a card deck, a board with the spade suit of cards on it in a C shape with a high card bar above it for the betting layout, a faro dealing box and an abacus like device called a case keeper were all the equipment a Faro bank had to have to run his game. The game was also known as “Bucking the Tiger” supposedly because of the tiger that once graced the back of Faro cards. However I suspect that the real reason behind this name is the tendency toward using concealed weapons (like a tiger’s concealed cat claws) and the dishonest “catty” nature of most Faro banks. However despite this reputation not all Faro banks were dishonest. Those that were run by genuine gamblers who liked risking their money just as much as the players did tended to be pretty “on the square” (A term from the 19th century that would be equivalent to “on the level” today). Basically there were five bets that could be made in Faro based on the placement of betting checks (you call them chips today) on or between the cards comprising the Faro Board layout and a sixth bet that could only be made at the end of each deal. A bet placed directly on a single card was called a Flat bet, a bet between two cards was called a Two Card Split, A bet placed at the C part of the layout (7, 8 and 9) was a three card split and a bet on the corners between four cards was a Four Card split. The fifth bet was high card which was placed on the bar above the main spade layout. This won if the player (also called winning card) was the highest card of a single turn in the game. With these bets you could play against the bank by placing ordinary chip bets or play with the bank by placing copper tokens on your bet (this was called coppering after the tokens) In addition to these bets that paid at one to one odds there was a sixth bet called “calling the turn” which was essentially a mini lottery based on the last three uncovered cards in the dealing box which paid of at 4 to one. A faro game started when the bank shuffled the cards and set them in a dealing box with the cards face up. The top card of this arrangement was called the “soda” and did not settle any bets. The card under the “soda” was the first bank or loser cards which lost all bets made against the bank on its rank on the layout but won all bets with the bank. The next card was the first player or winner card. It won all bets against the banks but lost all bets with the bank. This bank/loser - player/winner set comprised a single turn comprised The game continued in such loser /winner turns until four cards remained in the dealing box, these being the last winner of the conventional turns and the three cards of the lottery or “call” turn. To win the call turn one had to guess the exact order the card would come out of the dealing box. While this explanation sounds complicated today in fact Faro was a very simple game to play and set up which probably accounted for its popularity in the trail drive era. It was also probably the fairest casino game yet devised as a “house percentage” only occurred in three places in the game. One was in the conventional turns when a card of the same rank was both a winner and a loser. This was called a split and paid half of all bets on that card to the bank. The other was the lowered pay odds on the “calling” turn at the end of each game which was paid at four to one rather than the true six to one odds. The third was “dead” or unsettled bets at the end of a game all of which went to the bank. This low house percentage was probably a reason for the rampant cheating that Faro Banks were known to engage in. Usually in the form of using card trickery and “brace” dealing boxes to force splits or make cards with high bets on them losers if normal or winners if coppered. Another popular way of cheating the players in Faro was inaccurate case keeping (a record of all the cards played in each game was kept on the case keeper which the abacus device that was a part of the game was called.) This allowed the bank to collect more “dead bets” at the end of each game. As for poker its popularity came very late in the trail drive/mining camp era around 1884/1885 along with indexed two sided playing cards. (Playing cards up to that time simply had the suit pips for each number card with no numbers or indexes at the sides and the kings, queens and jacks were full figured and single sided. With the suit pip representing them at one of the upper sides and again no side indexes. Actually the most popular high hand wins poker type game of the trail drive/mining camp era was called Brag. In a lot of ways Brag was like poker but there were some differences as well. As a for instance in poker the highest possible hand is a straight flush consisting of the five highest ranked cards usually called a Royal Flush. The Highest hand in Brag was three of a kind called a Pair Royal in the game. Another unusual part of Brag’s rules was that the two LOWEST ranking cards three and two became the HIGHEST cards in Pairs Royal where three THREES is the highest possible hand in the game and in Run Flushes (equivalent of Poker’s straight flushes) and runs (Equivalent of Pokers straight) where the highest hands are 3, 2, A. In all other hands the cards ranked normally (A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2) . Three of a kind was the highest hand because Brag was played with three card hands. In forms of the game where five cards were dealt to each player two of them were discarded to make the three card hands. Five card Brag was the probable source of the Poker legend of the Western movies as the discarding phase of this version of the game probably made 19th century photographs and paintings of five card Brag looked like draw poker to modern gamblers and movie writers and producers. This was the rank of the brag hands. Pair Royal in threes ----- Three Threes Pair Royal ----------------- Three of a kind in ranks other than threes - A, A, A is second highest below 3, 3, 3 Run Flush ----------------- Equivalent of straight Flush in poker - 3, 2, A is highest Run As in poker there was an ante bet before any cards were dealt and a betting interval where bets could be raised called or folded before the hands were shown and the winner of the pot determined. The most daring form of Brag betting was called betting blind where the player would not even look at his hand before making or raising a bet. Also like in poker the players in Brag bet against each other and not between themselves and a “bank” like in Faro. Euchre was another popular card game of the period that could be used as a gambling game amongst the players themselves rather than between the players and a “bank” in saloons. Think of Euchre as a miniature game of Bridge played with a deck of cards stripped down to the sevens but with BOTH Jacks of the trump COLOR being the highest trumps. The object of the game was for the player who made the trump suit to win three tricks at least or furthermore to win all five tricks (Called March) with a five card hand. Because most of the cards in a Euchre deck are not in play in a hand like they are in bridge the game is much more of a gamble than bridge is. Like bridge it is a partnership game with Two teams of players playing against each other though the maker of trump has the option of playing alone against the defensive team for an enhanced score. In actual play Euchre follows the rules of trick taking games with a player leading a card and all the other players having to follow suit to and beat the card led In order to win the trick or win it by playing a trump if unable to follow suit. The winning team of the game is the first one to score from 7 to 15 points depending on the rules set up by the players before the game starts in multiple hands. Like in bridge gambling at Euchre is usually done by setting a monetary value to the points won in the game. Another popular card gamble of the trail drive/mining camp era of the 1860s, 70, and 80s was Monte Bank. No this is not the “Three Card Monte/Find the Queen” shell game that is often used to sucker gamblers today but it was a simpler version of Faro using the suits of the cards rather than their rank to determine the winners and losers. Like Faro it was a “bank” based game for which all that was required was a deck of cards. In Monte Bank the bank shuffles the cards and dealt either one or two of them face up on the table from the top and bottom of the deck respectively face up on the table. This formed the layout on which the bets were placed. The bank then placed the rest of the deck on the table face up and the suit of the top card was the winning suit. The bank had to pay off on all layout cards of this suit and won all bets on layout cards of the other suits. Now we will look at saloon games using dice. Probably the most popular of these were Over and Under, Chuck A Luck, Grand Hazard and High Dice. Of all these High Dice also called the Bartender’s or Saloon Keeper’s game was the easiest and most popular. This was another very basic game where the “bank” usually the Saloon’s bartender hence the term “bartender’s game” rolled a pair of dice and the other players bet that he could beat the number that the “bank” rolled. The house percentage in this game varied with the number rolled by the bank. A more sophisticated version of the same game was called High/Low, Under/Over Seven or Hieronymus (Probably named for Hieronymus Bosch a painter from the middle ages famous largely for his paintings depicting sin and hell. Use of this name probably helped to keep the reputation of gambling saloons as gambling “hells” going). Hieronymus was similar to high dice but was a more sophisticated table game with a betting layout. On this layout people could bet that the outcome of a roll would be High (Over 7), Low (Under 7), on 7 itself or in other individual numbers between 2 and 12 the dice could produce. Bird cage dice games were those that used three dice in an hourglass shaped cage to determine their outcomes. Of these the simplest one and the one most often played as a counter top rather than a table game was Chuck A Luck. Think of Chuck A Luck as Faro with dice rather than cards. The only layout in this game was the numbers from 1 to 6 in squares. To play the players placed their bets in the square of the number they hoped would come up on one of the three dice. If the number came up on a single die they would be paid at 1 to 1. If it came up on two dice they would be paid at 2 to 1 and if it came up on all three dice (called a raffle) the would be paid at 3 to 1. The bank collected all the bets on numbers that did not show. Though it had a very high percentage in favor of the house even when played honestly Chuck A Luck was probably the most popular dice gambling game of the trail drive/mining camp era. Grand Hazard was a game derived directly from Chuck A Luck and used the same hour glass “bird cage” with three dice in it as its outcome determiner. (Sometimes however with Grand Hazard a wheel of fortune device with the possible combination that could be rolled with three dice depicted on it would replace the “bird cage.”) It was called Grand Hazard largely because of the large number of bets added to the regular Chuck A Luck bets on the outcomes of individual dice. In addition to these the Grand Hazard player could bet on different aspects of the total of all three dice such as odd, even high, low, triples/raffles and the total of all three dice itself. There were also varying payoffs in Grand Hazard ranging from 1 to 1 for high, low, odd or even to 30 to one for a bet on a specific triple/raffle. Probably the most spectacular games in Saloon gambling were those who used wheel of fortune devices to determine their outcome. Amongst these Roulette (as it was played in boomtown saloons), Big Six and Grand Hazard (when it used the wheel rather than the “bird cage with dice) were the major wheel gambling attractions of the time. We have already looked at Grand Hazard in the dice games so we will start the wheel games with Big Six. Big Six was the simplest of these games and was played with a Chuck A Luck layout using a wheel of fortune with the numbers from 1 to 6 repeated on it in a random manner. Like with most wheel games the house percentage in Big Six was built into the payoffs on winning bets. Basically winners in Big Six were paid off at 4 to 1 rather than the true 5 to 1 odds of the game with the unit not being paid being the house’s percentage or commission for running the game. As was said earlier on in this article roulette was often played in the boom town saloons with a wheel of fortune device rather than a real roulette wheel and ball. This was because of the special transitory nature of Trail drive/mining camp era saloon gambling. Basically once the gold or silver gave out in a mining location or the railroad or cattle quarantine line moved along in a cattle location the gambling games had do be dismantled and moved out of the “dead” saloons of the old locations and moved to new ones in the new “boom” location where the new railhead, new non quarantine area or new gold or silver strike was. And that Honky Tonk Piano was hard enough to move around without adding other delicate devices like genuine Roulette wheels and tables to it. Therefore most Roulette west of the Mississippi of the 19th century was played with the hardier and easier to move wheel of fortune device. Another advantage of using the wheel of fortune for roulette was the ability to add a third green section to a wheel the bank had made for itself Rather than using a one or two green section standard wheel and ball device from a gambling equipment manufacturer. This third green section usually marked with an eagle upped the house percentage to 15 percent as opposed to 5 per cent with a standard two green section (0 and 00) wheel and ball device. This pointed to another aspect of 19th century western saloon gambling as opposed to modern Casino gambling. Because of the transitory nature of railheads, cattle quarantine lines and gold and silver mines a “grab it fast” mentality permeated the Western gambling saloons. Cheating, high house percentages or a combination of both was the order of the day in all banking games and often house cheaters would also be planted at the Brag and later Poker tables where the players bet against each other. This however did not mean that no one ever won. The best and most successful cheaters were those that allowed some actual winners rather than just hiring shill “winners” to keep the suckers coming in. Even though it was played with a wheel of fortune device rather than with a genuine roulette wheel and ball device Western Roulette offered the same betting options as its more sophisticate east of the Mississippi cousin. These were for odd, even, high, low, red, black, groups of numbers and individual numbers with payoff varying from 1 to 1 to 34 to 1. Virtually all of the games I talked about here do not exist today even in legal casino locations largely because of their lack of the sophistication that seems to draw modern players and at least in the case of Faro because of the very low house percentage the game allows when played honestly. However again it must be remembered that today’s gambling facilities have an air of permanency about them due to the law (limitations on where legal banking games can be played and minimum age limits on the players both of which did not exist in the 19th century) and other factors (gambling being a big business like farming, ranching and manufacturing). In the 19th century a live and active gambling saloon in an active boomtown one day could be a dead one in a ghost town literally the next day. Games that were easy to set up when the money was rolling in and that could be easily taken down and moved when the money quit rolling in (or anti gambling crusaders and the law did) were the order of the day in the 19th century west. Heavy sophisticated machinery like slots and genuine roulette wheels would have never made it back then.
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