Faro (card Game) - in Culture

In Culture

  • In a famous scene from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Nicholas Rostov loses 43,000 rubles to Dolokhov playing Faro.
  • Friedrich Freiherr von der Trenck makes mention of playing faro in his memoirs (February 1726– 25 July 1794); he was a Prussian officer, adventurer, and author.
  • Faro is central to the plot of Alexander Pushkin's story "The Queen of Spades" and Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades.
  • In "Showboat" by Edna Ferber, the gambler Gaylord Ravenal specializes in the game of Faro.
  • Numerous references to faro are made in the HBO television series Deadwood.
  • Casanova was known to be a great player of faro.
  • The 18th century Whig radical Charles James Fox preferred faro to any other game, as did 19th-century American con man Soapy Smith. It was said that every faro table in Soapy's Tivoli Club in Denver, Colorado, in 1889 was gaffed (made to cheat).
  • The famed scam artist Canada Bill Jones loved the game so much that, when he was asked why he played at one game that was known to be rigged, he replied, "It's the only game in town."
  • In Misfortune by Wesley Stace, Pharaoh is named after his father's profession, a faro dealer.
  • Wyatt Earp dealt faro for a short time after arriving in Tombstone Arizona having acquired controlling interest in a game out of the Oriental saloon.
  • John "Doc" Holliday dealt faro in the Bird Cage Theater as an additional source of income while living in Tombstone, Arizona.
  • Numerous references to faro are made in the Western radio drama Gunsmoke, starring William Conrad.
  • When planning The Sting on New York gangster Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), one of the conmen researching their mark mentions that he "only goes out to play faro" making him a hard target for the big con.
  • The town of Faro, Yukon was named after the game.
  • Lord Strongmore in John William Polidori's The Vampyre plays Faro in Brussels.
  • The episode "Staircase to Heaven" in the TV series Murdoch Mysteries involves a murder during a game of Faro.

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