At the middle of the 18th century the expenses of a Faro bank, in
all its items of servants, rent, puffs, and other incidental
charges of candles, wine, arrack-punch, suppers, and safeguard
money, &c., in Covent Garden, amounted to L1000 per annum.
Throughout this century Faro was the favourite game. 'Our life
here,' writes Gilly Williams to George Selwyn in 1752, 'would not
displease you, for we eat and drink well, and the Earl of
Coventry holds a Pharaoh-bank every night to us, which we have
plundered considerably.' Charles James Fox preferred Faro to any
other game.

HAZARD.

This game was properly so called; for it made a man or undid him
in the twinkling of an eye.

It is played with only two dice; 20 persons may be engaged, or as
many as will. The chief things in the game are the Main and the
Chance. The chance is the caster's and the main is the setter's.

There can be no main thrown above 9, nor under 5; so that 5, 6,
7, 8, and 9 are all the mains which are flung at Hazard. Chances
and nicks are from 4 to 10. Thus 4 is a chance to 9, 5 to 8, 6
to 7, 7 to 6, 8 to 5, and 9 and 10 a chance to 5, 6, 7, and 8; in
short, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 are chances to any main, if any
of these 'nick' it not.

Nicks are either when the chance is the same with the main, as 5
and 5, 6 and 6, 7 and 7, and so on; or 6 and 12, 7 and 11, 8 and