Oicho-Kabu

Oicho-Kabu is a traditional Japanese card game similar in structure to baccarat, played with a set of forty specialized cards called kabufuda rather than an ordinary Western deck. The game is played in a banking format, with two or more players competing against a dealer, and the goal for each player is to have their hand's card values sum as close as possible to nine, discarding the tens digit of any total the same way baccarat does. Its name and mechanics trace back to the Portuguese card game or gambling term Oito-Cabo, meaning eight-end, reflecting the historical Portuguese trading contact that introduced Western playing cards to Japan in the sixteenth century, after which the game was adapted to Japan's own kabufuda card sets. Skillful play rewards a sense of probability and card counting given the fixed forty-card pack, and the game remains a recognizable part of Japan's traditional card gambling culture alongside related games played with the same kabufuda decks.