| Famous French vying game | |
 Suit of Spades from a 28-card French-suited pack | |
| Origin | France |
|---|---|
| Type | Vying |
| Players | 3–5 |
| Cards | 28 |
Brelan (Old French : brelenc) is a famous French vying game with rapidly escalating bets from the seventeenth to nineteenth century, and hence also a name for a card player, gambler or the name of the place where the game was played. [1] The game is quite similar to the game of Bouillotte, but it is not played anymore.
In Old French, a brelan, berlan or berlenc (from High German: bretling = "board, table") was a table on which people played dice. [2] The game of Brelan, even breland, for the name and the rules varied over time, appeared as early as an edict of Lille, France, of 1458, however Depaulis says that "contrary to popular belief, [Brelan] only had the meaning of a card game in the 17th century". [3] In Crébillon's 1763 novel "Le Hasard du coin du feu", the game of "Brelan" takes centre stage. It is often considered as sharing roots with a Renaissance game of Primero and Primo visto. The game of Treschaken is equated to the French bréland in an 1802 Holstein dialect dictionary. [4]
In England, Brelan eventually developed into the game of Brag, also Bragg, where the possibility of bluffing is an important part of the game. It evidently derived from the game of Brelan and later evolved into Bouillotte, which flourished during the French Revolution. Most experts believe that all these earlier card games played an important part in the formation of modern Poker, the most famous representative of a very ancient and always very popular family of games, all of which can be traced even further back to the old French game of Gilet (Gillet, Gile or Trionfetti), [5] which may be considered the most ancient European ancestor of Poker.
Brelan is played by three, four or five players, with a 32-card pack, [6] each receiving 3 cards and a fourth turned from the stock. The best hand is a brelan carre, or four of a kind, made with the aid of the turn-up card on the table, followed by a simple brelan or prial. Brelan favori is a pair royal composed of 2 cards in the hand and the card turned.
In Brelan Cavé, [7] the game is limited to a certain number of rounds, the bouillotte, on the contrary, lasts as long as there are players in the game who still have not lost their stakes.
Brag is an 18th century British card game, and the British national representative of the vying or "bluffing" family of gambling games. It is a descendant of the Elizabethan game of Primero and one of the several ancestors to poker, the modern version just varying in betting style and hand rankings. It has been described as the "longest-standing British representative of the Poker family."
Primero, is a 16th-century gambling card game of which the earliest reference dates back to 1526. Primero is closely related to the game of primo visto, if not the same. It is also believed to be one of the ancestors to the modern game of poker, to which it is strikingly similar.
Primo visto, Primavista, Prima-vista, Primi-vist, Primiuiste, Primofistula, or even Primefisto, is a 16th-century gambling card game fashionable c. 1530–1640. Very little is known about this game, but judging by the etymology of the words used to describe the many local variants of the game, it appears to be one of Italian origin.
Etteilla, the pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Alliette, was the French occultist and tarot-researcher, who was the first to develop an interpretation concept for the tarot cards and made a significant contribution to the esoteric development of the tarot cards to a wide audience, and therefore the first professional tarot occultist known to history who made his living by card divination. Etteilla also influenced the French divination professional Marie Anne Lenormand. From 1783 to 1785, Etteilla published his work Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots, which is still considered the standard reference work of Tarot cartomancy. Etteilla published his ideas of the correspondences between the tarot, astrology, and the four classical elements and four humors, and in 1789 he published his own tarot deck, which, however, differed significantly from the classic tarots such as the Tarot de Marseille in terms of structure and card designations.
Ambigu is an historical French vying game, composed of the characteristic elements of Whist, Bouillotte and Piquet. A Whist pack with the court cards removed is used, and from two to six persons may play. Each player is given an equal number of counters, and a limit of betting is agreed upon.
Bouillotte is an 18th-century French gambling card game of the Revolution based on Brelan, very popular during the 19th century in France and again for some years from 1830. It was also popular in America. The game is regarded as one of the games that influenced the open-card stud variation in poker. The rules continue to be printed in French gaming compendia.
Reversis, or more rarely Réversi, is a very old trick-taking card game in the Hearts family. Its origin is uncertain, but it may have emerged in Italy before spreading to Spain and France. It is considered one of the two probable ancestors of Hearts, Black Lady and Black Maria, the other being Coquimbert or Coquinbert. It was very popular with the French aristocracy in the 17th and 18th centuries, and much played elsewhere, except in Britain. Initially quite simple, the game eventually developed more complex mechanics such as vast quantities of counters and a system of pools and side-payments. Its name may have possibly come from the reverse order and construction of the game itself, or even from its exceptional slam which, like "shooting the moon" in Black Lady, reverses the entire aim of the game.
Gilet, also Gile, Gillet, is a 16th-century Italian gambling card game that probably predates the game of Primero. Rabelais, in 1534, gives it pride of place in his list of games played by Gargantua, and Cardano, in 1564, describes it as Geleus, from the word Geleo, meaning "I have it".
Marjolet is a French 6-card trick-and-draw game for two players using a 32-card piquet pack. It is of the Queen-Jack type, and thus a relative of Bezique and Pinochle, albeit simpler. The trump Jack is called the Marjolet from which the name of the game derives.
Jeu Royal de la Guerre is a French novelty card game for two to twelve players that was described in La Maison des Jeux Academiques in 1659. It is a trick-taking game played with a dedicated war-themed 40-card pack based on the French-suited 36-card piquet pack. The suits are irrelevant for gameplay, and to a large extent the game is determined by four suitless special cards.
The card game of poker was developed in the United States at some point during the early 19th century, drawing its name and basic concept from much earlier European games. Since its early beginnings, poker has grown to become an extremely popular pastime throughout the world.
Bestia is an Italian card game. It is a gambling game and is similar to Briscola and Tressette. The word bestia means beast.
Located on the shore of Lake Geneva between the cities of Vevey and Montreux, the Swiss Museum of Games in La Tour-de-Peilz is dedicated to the preservation, research and dissemination of various forms of parlor games. Unlike many other museums in the world, the Swiss Museum of Games distinguishes the "game" from "toys". It is the oldest of its kind and unique in Europe. The collection spans more than 10,000 games, from antiquity to the present and from all over the world.
Poch, Pochen or Pochspiel is a very old card game that is considered one of the forerunners of poker, a game that developed in America in the 19th century. An etymological relationship between the game names is also assumed. Games related to Poch are the French Glic and Nain Jaune and the English Pope Joan. Other forerunners of poker and possible relatives of the game are the English game, Brag, from the 16th century and the French Brelan and Belle, Flux et Trente-et-Un. Poch is recorded as early as 1441 in Strasbourg. In north Germany it was called by the Low German name of Puchen or Puchspill, and the board was a Puchbrett.
Twenty-one, formerly known as vingt-un in Britain, France and America, is the name given to a family of popular card games of the gambling family, the progenitor of which is recorded in Spain in the early 17th century. The family includes the casino games of blackjack and pontoon as well as their domestic equivalents. Twenty-one rose to prominence in France in the 18th century and spread from there to Germany and Britain from whence it crossed to America. Known initially as vingt-un in all those countries, it developed into pontoon in Britain after the First World War and blackjack in Canada and the United States in the late 19th century, where the legalisation of gambling increased its popularity.
Mouche, also known as Lanterlu, is an old, French, trick-taking card game for two to six players which has elements, such as bluffing, reminiscent of the much later game of poker. It is a member of the Rams family of games and, although it is a gambling game, often played for small stakes, it is also suitable as a party game or as a family game with children from the age of 12 upwards. It is named after the mouche, a term that variously refers to its winning hand, the basic stake and the penalty for failing to take any tricks. Although also called Bête, it should not be confused with the older game of that name from which it came and which, in turn, was a derivative of Triomphe.
Bête, la Bête, Beste or la Beste, originally known as Homme or l'Homme, was an old, French, trick-taking card game, usually for three to five players. It was a derivative of Triomphe created by introducing the concept of bidding. Its earlier name gives away its descent from the 16th-century Spanish game of Ombre. It is the "earliest recorded multi-player version of Triomphe".
The game of Nain Jaune or Yellow Dwarf, also formerly called Lindor, is an "attractive and unique traditional French card game" using a board comprising five compartments or boxes. It is a reasoned game of chance because it combines the hazards of card distribution with the strategy of building suits. Nain Jaune, which is considered a classic French game, is named after the seven of diamonds, which is depicted as a yellow dwarf in the centre of the game board.
Thierry Depaulis is an independent historian of games and especially of playing cards, card games, and board games. He is President of the association Le Vieux Papier, a member of the editorial board of the International Board Game Studies Association, and a member of the board of directors of the foundation of the Swiss Museum of Games. He was President of the International Playing-Card Society from 2017 to 2022.
Ronfa was a 15th-century Italian card game, probably of French origin, and one of the two earliest known games in Europe. It may also have been the name of a since lost game of dice or tables.
