Bernadette Likes to Cheat at Faro

Faro, Pharaoh, Farobank, is a late 17th century French gambling card game descendant of Basset, and belongs to the Lansquenet and Monte Bank family of games, in that it is played between a banker and several players winning or losing according to the cards turned up matching those already exposed or not.

Although not a direct relative of Poker, Faro was played by the masses alongside its other popular counterpart, due to its fast action, easy-to-learn rules, and better odds than most games of chance. The game of Faro is played with only one deck of cards and allows for any number of players, usually referred to as "punters."

With its name shortened to Faro, it soon spread to the America in the 19th century to become the most widespread and popularly favored gambling game in America. Also called "Bucking the Tiger", which comes from early card backs that featured a drawing of a Bengal Tiger, it was played in almost every gambling hall in the Old West from 1825 to 1915.

Faro's detractors regarded it as a dangerous scam that destroyed families and reduced men to poverty, because of rampant rigging of the dealing box, so that many sporting-house began to supply companies gaffed dealing boxes specially designed so that the bankers could cheat on the players. Cheating then became so prevalent that editions of Hoyle’s Rules of Games book began their Faro section warning readers that a single honest faro bank could not be found in the United States. While the game became scarce after World War II, it continued to be played at a few Las Vegas and Reno casinos through 1985.

--wiki