Date: April 3, 2026 | Updated: September 11, 2026 | Reading time: 5 minutes | Author: Valentina Greco, Slot & Game Mechanics Expert
Before slots and online poker there were games that filled gaming rooms across Europe and the American West. Faro, Chemin de Fer, Hazard, Basset: names almost nobody knows today, yet the most played tables in any casino descend from them. This article tells where they came from, why they disappeared and what is left of them today, with the numbers for their modern heirs.
Basset, the ancestor
Born in Italy in the fifteenth century and spread through the French and English courts of the seventeenth, Basset was a card game in which players bet against a bank. It was so popular, and so ruinous to aristocratic fortunes, that it was banned in France under Louis XIV. The bank held a structural edge, and its most famous descendant grew out of that edge.
Faro, the game of the American West
A direct heir of Basset, Faro was the most widespread card game in American gambling halls throughout the nineteenth century. Its edge for the bank was low, around 2%, and came almost entirely from a single rule: when two cards of the same rank appeared, the bank took half the stakes on that rank. That low profitability for whoever held the bank, together with how easily the deck could be rigged, brought about its decline in the twentieth century.
Chemin de Fer, baccarat between players
In Chemin de Fer the bank is not the casino but passes from one player to the next, and the casino only takes a commission. It is the version of baccarat at which James Bond is introduced to audiences in the first film of the series, Dr. No, in 1962. In today's casinos it has almost everywhere been replaced by Punto Banco, where the bank is always the house and decisions follow fixed rules.
Hazard, the ancestor of craps
Hazard was a dice game already common in medieval England: Chaucer mentions it in The Canterbury Tales. Its rules were complicated and changed depending on the number the shooter chose. Simplified in the nineteenth century, it became the craps we know today.
| Old game | Era | Modern heir | Edge of the heir |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basset | 15th–17th century | Faro, now gone | — |
| Faro | 19th century | None in today's casinos | about 2% in its day |
| Chemin de Fer | 19th–20th century | Punto Banco | 1.06% on banker, 1.24% on player |
| Hazard | Middle Ages | Craps | 1.41% on the pass line |
All of these games disappeared for the same reason, even if in different centuries: they were too easy to rig or too unprofitable for whoever held the bank. The games that survived are the ones with fixed rules and a predictable edge. It is the same test that still separates honest games from legends, as we checked among the myths and realities of slot machines.
Anyone looking for the charm of an old table will find it today mostly at baccarat and craps, often in live form. How a table broadcast from a studio works is explained in how live casino works; for card games where decisions really matter, the blackjack strategy article is worth reading too.
Questions about forgotten games
Question: where can you play Faro today? Answer: practically nowhere. Faro disappeared from casinos during the twentieth century and the major game suppliers do not offer a version of it.
Question: is Chemin de Fer the same as online casino baccarat? Answer: no. In Chemin de Fer the bank passes between players; in casino Punto Banco the bank is always the house and the drawing rules are fixed.
Question: which descendant of these games has the lowest edge? Answer: the banker bet in Punto Banco, at 1.06%, followed by the craps pass line at 1.41%.
Question: why did these games disappear? Answer: because they were easy to rig or unprofitable for the bank. The games that survived are those with fixed rules and a predictable edge.
The casino's past is more interesting than its legends. If you want to play its heirs, head back to Bankagibi and choose a table with the edge in front of you.
