GLOUCESTERSHIRE { Holloway s _Dictionary_, _Midland { Garner_. Shepscombe, Cheltenham Miss Mendham. Forest of Dean Miss Matthews. HAMPSHIRE Cope s _Glossary_, Miss Mendham. Bitterne Mrs. Byford. Liphook Miss Fowler. HAMPSHIRE-- Hartley, Winchfield, Witney Mr. H. S.
The average is about twelve. The same customs as at whist prevail with regard to outside betting. The Vivant must pay or receive double, as he has to settle with each adversary. If four play, the one sitting out has nothing to do with the stakes; but he may make outside wagers on the result of the game. _=THE METHOD OF PLAYING=_ is practically the same as at whist, with the following exceptions:-- When it is the turn of Mort to play, Vivant selects the card for him. _=The Revoke.=_ The rules governing this are the same as those already given for English Dummy. Mort is not liable to penalty under any circumstances. If any other player revokes, his opponents may take three points from the score of his side; or add three points to their score; or take three of his tricks. The penalty cannot be divided; but if two or more revokes are made by the same side, the penalty for each may be enforced in a different manner.
Stead s _Holderness Glossary_ calls it Merrils, and describes it as a game played on a square board with eighteen pegs, nine on each side, called in many parts Nine Men s Morrice. See also _Sussex Arch. Collections_, xxv. 234, and a paper by Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite (_Arch. Journ._, xlix. 322), where diagrams of this game are given which have been found cut in several places on the benches of the cloisters at Gloucester, Salisbury, and elsewhere.
The first will be first described. _=Players.=_ Baccara may be played by any number of persons from three to eleven. Those first in the room have the preference, and should immediately inscribe their names. The first eleven form the table, and the privilege of being the banker is sold to the highest bidder; that is, to the one that will put up the most money to be played for. The remaining ten persons draw for choice of seats at the table, the first choice being for the seat immediately on the right of the banker, then for the first seat on his left. Five players are arranged on each side of the banker in this manner, right and left alternately, according to the order of their choice. Sometimes an assistant or croupier is seated opposite the banker, to watch the bets, gather and shuffle the cards, etc. A waste basket is placed in the centre of the table for the reception of cards that have been used in play. If no one bids for the bank, it must be offered to the first on the list of players; if he declines, the next, and so on.
Peacock). In some parts of Yorkshire it is customary to say no-horned lady instead of genteel lady at the beginning of the game. When we played this game we said always genteel after genteel lady, and varied the formula. For instance, the first player would say, I, a genteel lady, always genteel, come from a genteel lady, always genteel, to say she lives in a house with twelve windows, or words were used beginning with the letter A. Each player must repeat this, and add something else in keeping with a house; or sentences had to be made in which words beginning with the letter A must be said, the other players doing the same alphabetically.--London (A. B. Gomme). Mr. Newell, in writing of this game, says that the lamp-lighter or spill was lighted when placed in the hair of the players who made mistakes.
This would compel his adversary to play some domino having upon it a 5 or a 0. Let us suppose this adversary to hold the following dominoes: 6-6, 6-3, 6-1, 6-0, 5-1, 5-0. He would of course play the 6-0, in order to bring the line round to his long suit of 6’s. As this would close the blank end of the line, the first player, whom we shall call A, would have to play on the 5 end, as he has no 6. In order to get the line back to his second longest suit, the blanks, he would play the 5-2, hoping to play 2-0 next time. His adversary, B, would play on this end if he could, but being unable to do so, he gets rid of his heaviest domino, playing the double six. A plays 2-0, and B should now bring in his suit of aces by playing 6-1, which would win the game; but for the sake of illustration we shall suppose that he foolishly plays 6-4. A plays his double four, and the dominoes on the table present the following appearance:-- [Illustration] B, having neither 4 nor 0 on any of his remaining dominoes, says: “_=Go=_,” which signifies that he is blocked, and cannot play. A can now play at either end, and with either of two dominoes; but it would be bad policy to play the 4-5, because his adversary might be able to play to the 5; but it is a certainty that he cannot play to either 0 or 4. If A plays the 4-5, B gets rid of all his dominoes before A can play again.
His game is a Solo in hearts, in which he holds the three highest Matadores and announces schneider in advance. His game multiplier is therefore 3 (for the announced schneider), to which he adds 3 more for the Matadores, 6 altogether. The unit value of a heart Solo being 10, he could have gone on bidding to 60 had it been necessary, and he will win 60 from each of his adversaries if he succeeds in reaching 91 points in the counting cards he takes in in his tricks, together with what he finds in the Skat. If his adversaries got to 30 with their counting cards, he would have lost 60 to each of them, although he bid only 30, because he announced his game as schneider, and did not make it. Had he not announced the schneider, and reached 91 or more in his counting cards, he would have won a game worth 50, losing the extra multiplier by not announcing the schneider in advance; for a schneider made without announcing it is worth only 2. In reckoning the value of a game it is always safer to bid on playing “with” than “without” Matadores in a Solo or Tourné; because, although you may have a hand “without four,” you may find a Wenzel in the Skat, and if it is the club Jack you lose three multipliers at once. _=BIDDING.=_ The players must be familiar with the manner of computing the various games in order to bid with judgment, and without hesitation. Suppose you hold the three highest Matadores with an average hand, not strong enough in any one suit to play a Solo, but good enough for a Tourné. Your smallest possible game will be diamonds with three; which will be worth 5 multiplied by 4; 1 for the game, and 3 for the Matadores, 20 points.
B, therefore, has fourteen men in the second melee and A twelve, B makes two prisoners, kills ten of A s men, and has ten of his own killed. But now the six prisoners originally made by A are left without an escort, and are therefore recaptured by B. But they must go to B s back line and return before they can fight again. So, as the outcome of these two melees, there are six of B s men going as released prisoners to his back line whence they may return into the battle, two of A s men prisoners in the hands of B, one of B s staying with them as escort, and three of B s men still actively free for action. A, at a cost of nineteen men, has disposed of seventeen of B s men for good, and of six or seven, according to whether B keeps his prisoners in his fighting line or not, temporarily. [Illustration: Fig. 4--Battle of Hook s Farm. The Battle developing rapidly.] [Illustration: Fig. 5a--Battle of Hook s Farm.
If the take falls below that, the suspicion is that the table is being taken to the cleaners by a crooked gambler, or cross-roader. The table I had picked was the only one in the Sky Hi Club s casino with more than one stick-man working it. The girl sniffled, and her long skinny arm reached around behind me to snag a couple sandwiches the size of postage stamps from a waiter s tray. She wolfed them down, wiping at the end of her long nose with a wadded-up hunk of cambric. She d done it before, and plenty, for her nose was red and sore. She made cow-eyes at me. Don t say it, I told her. I m not your darlin Billy. The dice were to my right--I d get them after a couple more losers rolled. My unwanted hustler stood on that side of me, too.