hist-games: dating period card games

[Jane & Mark Waks]

Imran Ghory wrote:
> I've been searching english literature for early references to card games
> and have produced a list of dates of the earliest mention of card games
> that I could find.

Very useful. Once this settles down, it would be great to have on the
Web somewhere. If you put it on your own site, could you send me a link,
and I'll hook it into the Period Games page?

> Loadum - 1591

Not necessarily conclusive evidence for earlier, but a friend of mine
has just done a transcription of the games list from Gargantua. (It's on
the to-add list for the Game Page.) He's working from the 17th century
English translation, so it *may* be an inaccurate translation, but it
does list "Losing Load Him". If that's actually in Rabelais' original
(which I don't have to hand), that would push it back to 1530...

The Gargantua list can be found at:

	http://www.isebastiani.com/NotesAndLists/Gargantua-Games.html

				-- Justin

"You can get computers that can pass the Turing test either by making
 them more interesting or by making people less interesting.  Which is
 cheaper?"
		-- Michael Turyn