While there are at least a dozen excellent card games for two persons, the average player of to-day has undoubtedly outgrown such simple contests as All-fours, Hearts, Wuchre, or Rum. It is true that Piquet, Écarté, Cribbage, Casino, and Pinochle afford a little more intellectual amusement, but they lack the infinite variety which is vital to the continued popularity of any game, and in all of them luck is too predominating an element.
There has been of late years a persistent and growing demand for a good card game for two persons, such as man and wife, which shall be at once simple in its construction, interesting in its developments, full of variety and surprises, and at the same time shall not require such an amount of highly specialized technical knowledge as, for example, Auction Bridge. It must be a game in which one can make mistakes without being exposed to the criticism of a partner; a game that one can play well or ill, and still enjoy it. We play cards for the excitement and amusement, as a pastime and a pleasure.
As there seems always to be a supply to meet every demand, we find that Russian Bank has lately been coming into vogue as an excellent game for two persons; especially those who want a little more excitement than Euchre, a little less luck than Pinochle, but sufficient intellectual exercise to satisfy both the average and the most exacting card player.
Russian Bank is a gradual development from various forms of Solitaire, especially one which has been known since 1910 as Crapette, which seems to be a coined word. The game provides excellent training for both observation and judgment and has many surprising alternatives, owing to the infinite possibilities of the distribution of two packs of fifty-two cards each. It is impossible for any two games of Russian Bank to be even remotely alike, and even with exactly the same distribution of the cards the outcome may vary in countless ways. Another point in its favor is that each player is as much concerned in his opponent’s moves as in his own, the interest never flagging for a moment.
In addition to its attractions, Russian Bank has proved to be a refuge for the many sensitive persons who have become a little tired of the fault-finding partners that are so common at the bridge table. One may have a partner at Russian Bank, but he is simply an advisor, whose counsels may be taken or rejected at pleasure, after openly discussing their possibilities.
It is with a view to bringing the game to the notice of the card-playing public, and at the same time clarifying its laws and bringing out the beauties of its play, that the following pages have been written.
R. F. Foster.
The Savage Club, London.
1920
The more common form of the game is played with two packs of fifty-two cards each, having backs of different colors, such as red and blue; but many persons prefer the shorter pack, of thirty-two, or thirty-six cards, in order to get quicker action and shorter games. As the same principles apply to each game, whether the cards run from the ace and deuce up to the queen and king, or from the six or seven up to the king and ace, the following description will be confined to the full pack, fifty-two cards, running from the ace, as a foundation, to the king, which ends the sequence.
There are only two active players, who attend to all such matters as shuffling, cutting and dealing, and who make the actual plays; but by agreement either or both of them may have a duly-appointed advisor, agreed to by the adversary, with whom plays may be openly discussed, in the hearing of the opponent, before each play is made.
One of the packs is shuffled and spread, face down, and each active player draws a card, the lower having the choice of seats and packs, and having the right to begin the play. The cards rank from the king and queen down to the deuce and ace. Ties cut again, the suits having no rank.
Supposing the packs to be blue and red, and the lower cut having chosen the red, he shuffles the blue pack for his opponent, while the opponent shuffles the red pack. Each then cuts the pack he has just shuffled, and passes it over to his opponent.