Basset (card game)

Basset is a banking card game of pure gambling. It takes its French name, bassette, from the Italian bassetta, and it was also known as barbacole and hocca. In its day it was counted among the most polite of games, because it was meant for people of the highest rank, who could stand large gains and large losses. Some authors credit its invention in 1593 to a Venetian noble named Pietro Cellini, who was sent into exile in Corsica for it, while the word bassetta itself is recorded in Italy from the first half of the fifteenth century. The Venetian ambassador brought it to France in 1674, it was popular at the court of Charles II, and it reached England around 1677. Louis XIV forbade it in 1691 because of the sums lost. The rules favoured the dealer, called the banker or tailleur, so strongly that the right to keep a bank was reserved to younger sons and other members of great families; to the punters the game was in effect a lottery.