History of Baccarat

Historians have been unable to pinpoint the precise origin of the first card games, but they are believed to have been played over 2,000 years ago, before paper was invented. There has been evidence of card playing in ancient China, India, and Egypt.

As with dice, the Crusaders introduced cards to Europe in the fourteenth century, and although the church was soon preaching that they were the invention of the devil himself, Johann Gutenberg printed cards in A.D. 1440, the same year he printed his famous Bible. Consisting of 78 cards, the pack was called Tarots, and it formed the basis of today's deck of cards. The Tarots had four suits representing the four classes of feudal society. Swords, in Spanish spades, from which we get spades, symbolized the nobility. Merchants were represented by coins, frequently square in shape, which, when turned on end, became today's diamonds. The sign for the serfs was literally a club, then called a baton, and today the cloverleaf-shaped sign is still called a club. The emblem for the church was the grail, or chalice, and from its characteristic shape developed our hearts.

Gutenberg’s Tarot deck consisted of 22 a touts, or trumps-including a joker-and four snits of 14 cards each, with 10 numbered cards plus a king, a queen, a knight, and a valet or jester. Before the year 1500, the 22 a touts and the valet were dropped, although today in some games the five top-ranked cards are still called trumps, and in other games the joker (jester) is still used. Originally, the face cards were portrayals of actual personages, and slight traces of them remain to this day. The king of spades portrayed Charlemagne; the king of diamonds represented Julius Caesar; Alexander the Great was the prototype for the king of clubs. On the feminine side was Helen of Troy as the queen of hearts, Pallas Athena as the queen of spades, and the biblical Rachel as the queen of diamonds. Also honored from time to time were Joan of Arc and Elizabeth I, as well as a number of others. The knights, or jacks as they came to be called, were all patterned after famous soldiers, such as Sir Lancelot for clubs; Charlemagne's nephew Roland for diamonds; Hogier Le Danois, another Charlemagne lieutenant, for spades; and Etienne de Vignoles, who fought for Charles VII of France, for hearts. By 1492 the modern deck of cards as we know it had been established and was introduced to America by Christopher Columbus and his sailors.

online baccarat games (pronounced Ba-ka-ra with short a's and a silent t) was introduced in France during the reign of Charles VIII, around A.D. 1490. The games was devised in Italy by a gambler named Felix Italy by a gamber named Felix Falguiere, who based it on the old rituals of the Nine Gods, who prayed standing on their toes to a blonde virgin who cast a novem dare (nine-sided die) at their feet. If her throw was eight or nine, she was crowned a priestess. If she threw a six or seven, she was disqualified from further religious office and her vestal status was summarily transmuted. And if her cast was five or under, she walked gracefully into the sea. online baccarat games was designed with a similar partition (albeit with less dramatic payoffs).

Unfortunately, today it's the casino patrons who are usually destined to face a fate similar to that suffered by the would-be priestess when she cast a five or seven.