Faro — rules

Bucking the tiger, the way the old halls dealt it, simplified. The layout is the thirteen ranks, ace to king. The dealer works through one shuffled deck, two cards a turn and one turn a round (every 20 seconds; bets close after 14 seconds): first the banker’s card, which loses, then the player’s card, which wins.

• Money on the winning card’s rank is paid 1 to 1. Money on the losing card’s rank is lost.
• Money on any other rank is returned at the end of the turn. It does not ride on: put it down again next turn.
• A split — both cards the same rank — takes half the money on that rank and returns the rest. Stakes go down in $2s so half is whole dollars.
• The case-keeper under each rank shows how many are left. A rank with none left is dead for the deal and takes no bets. When 2 cards are left the deck is gathered and a new deal starts.
• Each turn’s cards are drawn from exactly what is left of the deck; the cards already out are fixed before the round’s seed hash is shown.
• With n of a rank among N cards left a bet returns 1 − n(n−1) / 2N(N−1): a split is the house’s whole edge. Over the unseen deck that is 99.774% on every turn (house edge 0.226% of all money bet, or 1.515% of the money a fresh deck actually decides).