hist-games: Re: Gambling games for Tavern

[Jane & Mark Waks]

I seem to have missed a message in this thread, but responding a bit to
Seaan's article --

Michael and Susan McKay wrote:
> According to Parlett's "The Oxford Guide to Card Games" (which was also
> published in an inexpensive paperback edition), "31" was mentioned in a 1464
> translation of a sermon preached by Bernadine in 1440.  We don't know how it
> was played.

Hmm. We certainly have a post-period card game named One-and-Thirty,
which is fairly basic and elemental, and indeed pretty similar to
blackjack. That's 1665; I'd say that there's a non-trivial chance that
it's close to the 15th century game, although with a 200-year span
that's *far* from certain. Parlett doesn't list it because it's only
described in Willoughby, which still isn't published. (Although I gather
from Jeff Singman that there is still hope of seeing it one of these
years.) One-and-Thirty is described in the Period Games Rules site.

> Basset is an Italian game referenced from the mid-15th century on.  Poch is
> a fun gambling German game, but requires a tray (making a Poch board has
> been a low priority project of mine for quite some time), earliest recorded
> is at Strasburg in 1441.  I've seen Poch rules on the web, but I am not sure
> about Basset.  Let me know if you are interested.

Hmph; Modar has a description of Basset on the Web, but his URL
apparently has changed, so the pointers from the Period Games Page now
fail. A Google search turns his site up in a slightly changed location.
Basset can be found at:

	http://www2.kumc.edu/itc/staff/rknight/Game14.htm

This is just a concise description of the game, without any
reconstruction details, so I can't assess how good the reconstruction
is, but it's what's available...

				-- Justin
				   Who needs to go redirect all the pointers
				     to Modar's site...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send email to majordomo at pbm.com containing
the words "unsubscribe hist-games". If you are subscribed to the digest version,
say "unsubscribe hist-games-digest". To contact a human about problems, send
mail to owner-hist-games at pbm.com