Basset
A 17th-century Italian banking game, brought to fashionable prominence at the French court, in which players bet on cards turning up from the banker's deck — a direct ancestor of Faro.
Coming soon — not yet playable
Rules
Basset is a historical banking card game rather than a hand-comparison game: one player acts as banker for the round, and every other player bets against the banker rather than against each other.
Each player selects a card (traditionally from their own small personal deck or set of cards representing each rank) and places a bet on it. The banker then deals through a full shuffled deck two cards at a time, alternating which of the pair favors the banker and which favors the players holding that matching rank; players whose chosen rank appears on the "player-favored" draw win from the bank, while a match on the "banker-favored" draw pays the bank instead.
Historical note: Basset is credited to an Italian nobleman (commonly cited as Justiniani, a Venetian) and became enormously fashionable at the court of Louis XIV in France in the late 17th century, where it was prized (and eventually banned at various points) for the size of the bets it attracted among French nobility. It's considered the direct ancestor of Faro (also in this library), which simplified and popularized Basset's core banking mechanic.
Strategy notes: As with other historical banking games in this library (Faro, Zecchinetta), Basset involves no bluffing or hand-reading between players — the only meaningful decisions are which card to back and, for the banker, managing exposure across every bet on the table simultaneously.
Common house rules
Simplify to Faro instead
Because authentic Basset's exact card-set and payout structure is complex and not fully standardized across historical sources, most modern tables wanting to try this style of game default to playing Faro instead, which streamlined the same core mechanic.
Rotate the bank
As with other banking games in this library, most modern revivals rotate who deals as banker every round rather than fixing one player as banker for an entire session.
Historical curiosity, not a fixed modern ruleset
Treat Basset as a reference point in poker and gambling history rather than a game to reconstruct rule-for-rule — the interesting part is its direct lineage into Faro and its place in French court gambling history.
Related games
Based on shared category, origin, and rules that reference each other.
Zecchinetta
An old Italian gambling card game, close cousin to games like Basset and Faro, in which a banker deals cards one at a time and players bet on whether a matching card appears before the banker's own.
Learn the rules →Faro
A once-massively popular banking card game (also called Pharaoh) that dominated American and European gambling halls for over two centuries, simplifying Basset's mechanic into a fast, simple bet-on-a-card game.
Learn the rules →Lansquenet
A German banking game named after 15th-16th century mercenaries, first referenced by Rabelais in 1534 — a direct precursor to Faro and Baccarat, and ancestor of Italian Zecchinetta.
Learn the rules →Naqsh
A banking game from the Ganjifa card tradition, which originated in 15th-century Persia and flourished at the Mughal courts of India — players bet on reaching specific card-total combinations.
Learn the rules →