Fancier establishments used actual layouts printed or painted on felt. In Faro’s heyday, the layout was often simply thirteen cards from another deck glued to a board. Traditionally, the cards displayed are the thirteen spades, but there’s no reason any other suit couldn’t be used. A Faro layout consists of thirteen cards, one of each rank. You will also need a dealing box, or shoe, as well as a Faro layout. While plastic playing cards weren’t invented until long after Faro lapsed into obscurity, you can take advantage of modern technology and use Denexa 100% Plastic Playing Cards in your Faro game. The object of Faro is to win money by successfully predicting which cards will be dealt as “winning” cards.įaro requires one standard 52-card deck of playing cards. Though it began a period of steady decline after the war, Faro continued to be dealt in some Nevada casinos until 1985. It remained popular in the United States until around World War I. Faro arose as a legal alternative, until it, too, was banned, although it spread to England and from there to the United States, where it continued to remain legal.

Crooked dealing boxes and stacked decks were common in the days of Faro.įaro is closely related to Basset, a game played in France up to 1691, when it was banned. Unfortunately, that low rate of return for the house led many unscrupulous dealers to cheat. Faro’s popularity was because not only is it easy to learn, it has a very low house edge compared to other games like Blackjack. Faro is a gambling game which was hugely popular in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, especially in the Old West.

What is the card game faro