Il Flusso

Flush          (il Flusso, Le Flux)

(The Pope and the kings of England & France playing Le Flux - woodcut caricature -1499)

Flush is an ancient 3 card gambling game that is first mentioned by Lorenzo de Medici (1449-1492) in a set of poems called  "Canti Carnascia Leschi" where the game is mentioned as being in common use among the people of Florence (along with the Venetian game of Basseta). Lorenzo de Medici is said to have written these poems in his youth, so the reference can be dated to around 1470.

Flush or il Flusso as it was known in Italy, is one of 10 games mentioned by the poet Franchesco Berni (1497-1535)  in a commentary called  "il Capitolo della Gioco Primiera" which was published at Rome in 1526. Berni who spent much of  his life at the Papal court refers to:
Basseta, Cricca, Trionfi, Trionfi-piccoli, il Flusso,Trentuno, Noviera, Setiera, Quintiera, Ronfa.
Much of Berni's work is given over to a discussion of Primiera (Primero) which he regarded as the best game of all.

Gerolamo Cardano (1501-1576) who lived in Milan refers to both "Fluxus, and "Fluxus Gallicus" in  his Latin work "Liber de Ludo Aleae" (1564). He regarded Gallicus Fluxus (French Flush) as the most elegant variation of the game, and supplied some technical details on its method of play:

"Fortunae solius sunt primiera fluxus, qui fit cum tribus chartis: gallicus est pulcherrrimus, nam unum cum figura, vel cum binario efficit 21, qui summas est punctus apud reliqua, plerasque gentes. Sed apud gallos, si adsit aliud unum fiunt viginti unum cum dimidio. Sed tria puncta superant etiam fluxum  et est supremum, et pro fluxu et puncto haberi potest. Viginti etiam cum uno puncto alia in charta efficit viginti cum dimidio, et ita habent viginti, viginti cum dimidio, viginti unum,  et viginti unum cum dimidio,  et viginti duo, qui (ut dixi) superior est fluxui."
(Liber de Ludo Aleae  xxv de De Ludis Chartarum )

Translated this reads:
"Solely dependent on chance are Primero and Flush, which is played with three cards: the French game is the most beautiful, for an Ace with a Court card or a  2 makes 21 which is in general the highest point recognised  in most countries. But amongst the French, should there be another Ace in hand, it makes 21.5. But three Aces beats even the Flush and is the  highest hand of all  for it can be counted both as a  Flush and an Ace . A point of 20  with an Ace as the other card makes 20.5, and so they have  20, 20.5, 21, 21.5 and 22, which (as I have said)  is higher than  the flush"

Le Flux or Flush became very popular in France. According to chroniclers, Louis XII (1462-1514) played at Flush within the sight of his troops, and his successor Francis I (1494-1547) was said to have been addicted to the game. It was also the favoured game of Anne of Brittany and her son Charles VIII in the 1490's. A Swiss wood-cut print of the early 16th century shows  the Kings of France and Switzerland  playing at what is clearly 3 card Flush. According to  Ed.S. Taylor's "History of Playing Cards" written around 1865, the game of Flush was still  being played in the Charente district of France in the mid 19th century.


Rules of Play

Players  - 2 to 10

Deck  - In Italy the 40 card deck (8.9.10s removed)
            In Spain the 48 card deck ( 10's removed)
            In France the 36 card deck  (6.5.4.3 's removed)
            in England  the 52 card deck  (standard)

The 36 card deck with the 2's retained  is probably the most authentic deck to use for Le Flux . It has the same  deck and point structure  used for playing the old game of Trappola in Europe and was also the preferred deck for playing Gillet.

Point values  -  Aces     = 11
                      Court cards    = 10
                      Twos       = 10
                       Other cards    = pip value

Method -  Players stake to a pool and receive three cards face down. They examine their cards and  make bets  against each other as to who has the strongest hand. The eldest hand had the option of passing and re-entering the betting. When all are done, those who have not withdrawn and abandoned their stakes  then show down their cards. The money is won by the holder of the highest  pointed  2 or 3 card flush of 21 points or less. A 3 card flush beat any two card flush.   Certain combinations of Aces were special cases which could win the Flush.

Special Cases
 A.A.A    - A Pair-Royal of Aces is conventionally scored as a winning  flush of     22
 A. (T+A)  A Pair of aces with a court or 2 flush to one of them  counts as               21.5
 (A+T)   An Ace with a Court,  or 2 flush  is the normal  winning high flush            21
A + (20)    A two card flush of 20  points  + Ace of another suit counts                    20.5

All other 2 or 3 card  flushes are counted on their pip values, and the highest pointed  flush hand wins the stakes. If a 3 card flush exceeded 21, then the highest two cards were counted.  In the event of a point tie, the Eldest hand wins the stakes.


Le Flux was displaced  in the latter half of the 16th century by a more complex game called Gillet (known as Gile in Italy), which bore a marked resemblance to the game of Post & Pair played in England according to  an entry in John Florio's "Italian Dictionary" (1611).

Gile Alla Greca

Gile Alla Greca - Piccolo           ( Italian suited Trevigiane Deck)

This name turns up rather obliquely in some academic papers about early Italian card games and the history and development of Tarocchi. Some writers seemed to feel that it was related to the old Italian game of Trionfetti which was documented by name from the time of Berni in 1526. Several Italian authors stated that Gile Alla Greca had been played in Italy, especially in Venice up until the 19th century and that there were even descriptions of it to be found in printed books dealing with card games of that period in Italy. Needless to say I found this rather intriguing and wished to trace such printed sources. For a long time I could not find the actual texts, but then in 2014 I found two online sources* that pointed me towards digital scans of a slim pamphlet barely 20 pages long that was originally printed in Venice in 1845.

The title is 'Instruzione Sul Giuoco Del Piccolo denominato Gile Alla Grega ossia Trionfetti della Greca Nazione'  It seems to have been edited by and printed under a pseudonym of D.R. Dalmata.

It took some while to translate this document because the text is written in a rather decorative and antiquated form of literary Venetian Italian with unexpected and inconsistent spellings and contractions, and the pamphlet had also been typeset and proof-read in an erratic and highly error prone way. The printer had frequently confounded both the letters 'b' and 'h', and the letters 'm' and 'n'; and towards the end of the text had taken to adding an entirely spurious lettter 'n'  into  a number of  polysyllabic words where it didn't belong. A significant portion of the pamphlet is devoted to a lengthy and uninformative discussion of of laws and points of etiquette in the game.

Historical Precis

The author says that the game was of Levantine origin by which he means that it came from countries on the Eastern side of the Mediterranean sea, away from Italy. He says it came to Italy in the final days of the Venetian Republic shortly before its collapse around 1796. According to the author the game was orginally called Mikro which is the Greek equivalent of the Italian word Piccolo meaning 'small' which is one of the names given to it in Italy.  The author says the game was first discovered by Venetian soldiers and sailors who were stationed on the Ionian islands when the Venetian Republic controlled that part of the eastern Mediterranean, and had extensive garrisons on the islands (between 1238 and 1797). He says the game was especially popular in the Venetian colony of Dalmatia (on the coast of modern Croatia) and that the form of the game popular in Venice most likely came from there. The association with the game of Trionfetti seems to be largely a figure of speech, the author was trying to say that  the game had been as popular in the Ionian Greek islands as Trionfetti once was in Italy.

Precis of Playing Rules

Pack - The 52 card Italian suited Trevigiane pack of Venice  - King (re), Cavalier (cavallo), Knave (fante),10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,A (asso)

Players - Four in two partnerships  - (A two handed variant also exists)

Preliminaries

Six cards are dealt face down on the table.The players draw and turn up one at a time. The first two players to draw cards of the same suit become partners. against the other two.

Alternative method -  deal one card face up to each player and keep dealing until two players hold a pair of an agreed card. These two  become partners against the other two.

If five players wish to play then one must be eliminated by a double draw for partners. If six players are at the table then two must be eliminated by a  double draw, but these two form a partnership in a reserve team that replaces whichever pair of players lose the game. The reserve pair are know as battifondo (the shoals)

Scoring

The game is played for points that may be recorded with pencil and paper, chalk  marks on a table, or by counters. (or coffee grounds ! )

The game is normally played to 77 points up, but is sometimes limited to 41 or 51 points.

Deal

The players cut for deal, King high, Ace low.The dealer  deals three cards face down to each player and turns up one more on top of the stock.

Piccolo

The first round of competition is for the best pair of matching cards of the same rank known as as gile or piccolo. King is highest card, Ace is lowest.

A player makes a claim for best pair by saying 'piccolo'

A rival may contest by saying 'un altro' (another) or pass by saying 'Buono' (good) or 'Buono il suo piccolo' (good it is your piccolo)

If there is a contest, the first player must now bet a certain number of points of his chosing as a vada  e.g.  'dieci vada' (I go for ten points)

If the other player  wishes to challenge (accuso), then they must concede a gain of 10 points to the opponents if they cannot beat their pair.

If two equal pairs are shown, then the elder hand wins.

Gilon

A Gilon is a pair-royal, three cards of the same rank. Rather oddly it has no special status in Gile Alla Greca. The pamphlet advises a player to bet a gilon of aces as a piccolo or pair because if you bet it as a punto it will be worth only 11 points, the value of a single ace.

Punto

The next competiiton is for the best flush point up to a limit of 21 points

Ace counts 11 points

Court Cards and Twos count 10 points

All other cards count their pip value

The punto cannot exceed 21 points made up of cards of the same colour and suit.

The compettion for punto is done exactly like that for the piccolo.

 If two players wish to compete then one wagers a vada of so many points, and if the other challenges, they show down.

Baratto (Barter)

At either the piccolo or the punto a player may offer a baratto (barter) for a specified number of points by placing their cards face down on the table

This means they are offering a wager to win the bet after exchanging their three cards with those of their opponent.

If the opponent accepts, the two players exchange hands face down on the table then expose to see who has won.

Resto

At any point  a player may make  a bet for the rest of the points needed to win the game by saying  either:

 resto della partita  vada ad accusar   (the rest of the game goes on a challenge)

 resto della partita vada a baratto         (the rest of the game goes on a barter)

e.g if they are on 60 pts in a 77 pt target game, then the wager is for the balance of 17 pts needed to close out the game.

The first statement is a simple showdown challenge.

The second is the offer of a barter and a showdown after a mutual exchange of cards with the opposing player.

Keeping cards

when each round is completed, the players keep the cards of their previous hand together face up on the table (like open tricks), and three more cards are dealt  face down to each player for the next round of betting.  As the deal progresses, more and more cards from previous hands will be in view, and it will become easier to calculate which cards are left undealt in stock.

Inspecting the Stock

Players are not allowed to touch or inspect the undealt stock until the fourth and final round of betting  when only four undealt cards will be left in stock. At this point  players may by agreement turn the last four cards over for all to see.

Passemo

If all players agree to do so, then a round can be passed out immediately after the deal.

One player says passemo (let us pass ?)  or andemo a monte (shall we go to the stock?)

If the others agree, all cards are returned to stock,  then shuffled, and a new deal is made.

Footnotes

The two-handed variant is almost identical, except that the final four cards are dealt and played out as a hand of just two cards apiece.

The game is effectively one where all the counters start in a central pool, and a team draws the appropriate number of counters won by each succesful wager at each turn into a side pool of their own, until the specified target number is reached.

Turning the top card of the stock at each deal seems to have no other purpose other than to expose a card to view. Players are not allowed to peek at the bottom card of the stock. A recut or a reshuffle can be asked for if peeking is suspected.

The pedantic attention to correct pronunciation of technical terms in the game found in the pamphlet reflects the differences between the distinctive Venetian dialect which was a lingua franca throughout the Venetian Stato da Mar for many centuries, and the Tuscan dialect of Dante which became the standard form of mainland Italian. The game evolved in the Greek speaking part of the Venetian sea-borne empire where Veneto was the administrative colonial language, and traveled across the Adriatic from the Venetian colony in Dalmatia where a variety of other Romance languages were also in use.

* http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vCdXAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Researching Post & Pair

Researching "Post and Pair"

I first came across a description of Post and Pair thirty-five years ago in a modern facsimile copy of  "The Compleat Gamester" written by Charles Cotton and published in 1674. I was researching other period card games notably Ombre and Primero at the time, and paid little attention to Cotton's brief account of Post and Pair.

Several years later when I was writing up my notes on games I decided to include a reconstruction of Post and Pair partly for the sake of completeness, and partly because the odd name and the fact that the game had West country associations  had captured my attention. I naively assumed  from a cursory reading of Cotton's text that it would be a trivial task.  After all it was just a three card vying game, how difficult could it be ? I soon found out.

When I tried to extract a playable set of rules from Cotton's description I quickly found myself floundering. What exactly was a 'Post", what was a "Seat", how were the stakes divided ? As usual I looked for other sources and discovered there were none. Cotton's account of Post and Pair is the only original period  description. Later accounts by  Randle Holme "Academy of Armory"(1688) and  Richard Seymour "The Court Gamester"(1734) are pirated verbatim from Cotton, and Hoyle does not even mention Post and Pair. Try as I might, I could not locate any period dialogues, play scripts or poems involving the play of a hand at Post and Pair, though I did begin to accumulate an impressive array of literay allusions to the game (it was a very long while before I stumbled across the 17th century poem "Post & Pare compared to Mortall Life" by John Davies of Hereford).

When I compared my notes with the writings of other published  card game specialists, I discovered that I was not alone. No-one could make sense of the over-brief description of Post and Pair in "The Compleat Gamester". Quite a few writers I found had misled themselves by assuming that Post & Pair was related to the 18th century game of Brag, or by supposing it was almost the same as Brag's most immediate predecessor  Bone-Ace, even though Cotton provides quite separate descriptions of these two games. Most of these modern writers  attempted to rationalise their reconstructions by assuming that Cotton's account was corrupt or "muddled". This I felt was unsatisfactory. You can "prove" anything by tampering with texts. You have to respect your sources and assume that they were being truthful and that the original author meant exactly what they seem to be saying, however inconvenient it might be to a modern historian trying to draw up neat genealogies of card games.

Cracking the rules of Post and Pair turned into a passing hobby of several decades duration. I studied Cotton's 300 word description of the game like a Talmudic proof-reader. It became an exercise  in cryptography and inference which led at times in unexpected directions. Slowly I began to uncover relevant information about how the game was played.

Some of the first real clues came from French sources. Randle Cotgrave's French-English dictionary of 1611 for instance confirmed that a "Post" meant a flush. At which point the origin of the familiar proverb "Pipped at the Post" thundered into my head. The "Post" was the highest pointed flush holding of a suit with the Ace counting 1.

I was reading  Girolamo Cardano's 16th century "Liber de Ludo Aleae" in the original Latin, and was struck by his account of  a game  called Gallicus Fluxus. I realised that the English translator Gould had been foxed by Cardano's Latin, and had failed to realise that the Latin phrase "habeo ego"  did not mean "in my opinion", but was  in fact a reference to another 3 card game called "Je l'ai" or Gé in French, also known as Gillet. I discovered that John Florio had specifically associated Post and Pair with Gillet (Gile) in his English Italian Dictionary(1611). Some years earlier I had obtained photocopies of large parts of the 18th century  French compendium "Academie Universelle des jeux" which contains an account of Gillet.  I now re-read all of these sources in tandem.

It became clear that the English game of Post and Pair carries a Spanish name,  for "Post" comes from the Spanish  "Apostar " meaning to wager a sum of money. The game is however part of a closely related family of games all derived from the more ancient European game of il Flusso or Flush, and played under a variety  of names in different countries. The English called their version "Post and Pair". The French called it Gé or Gillet, the Germans called it Dreisatz, and the Italians called it Trionfetti or Gile a la Greca in Venice.

For a long time I boggled at the idea of a 3 card vying game which involved a trump suit,  in which a final show-down was optional, and the largest stakes were settled solely on the highest single card. All of these however were directly implied within Cotton's account of Post and Pair, and amplified by my own research. Eventually an internet link led me to search for an obscure poem called "Mortall Life compared to Post and Pare", an allegory which is contained within "The Wittes Pilgrimage"  by the cleric and minor poet John Davies of Hereford written in 1610. Finding this text was far from easy. It has been out of print in England since the 19th century. I eventually located a copy in a searchable online  database in Stanford university library USA, which would only liberate one line of text at a time. I had to keep doing overlapping chained-phrase searches to recover the 18 verses I required. Once I had the poem, careful reading of this time-capsule appears to confirm my reading of Cotton's rules for Post and Pair.

Post and Pair continues to fascinate me. It was the favourite game of  Shakespeare's great contemporary Ben Jonson, it was also a favourite game of George Washington, the first President of the USA. Numerous 17th century authors such as Sir John Harrington, Francis Willughby  and John Earle  refer to it. According to some folklorists such as the rural writer Richard Jefferies (1848-1887), the game survived here in the West Country up until the 1860s. It still does seem incredible that no-one other than Cotton ever wrote down the rules of the game, or that reconstructing them would prove so difficult.