If you walk into any Las Vegas casino pit today, you will see more blackjack tables than any other game, usually by a large margin. If you could go back in time to the 1950’s Craps once dominated the casino pit in the same way. If you could travel back even further, to the turn of the 19th century, the most popular gambling game in the USA would have been Faro.
For those entirely unfamiliar with Faro, I encourage you to check out this WikiHow article. The basic game is played with a 52-card deck and a layout (a bit like a roulette layout) showing all the different card values. Players can bet on which cards they will think will "win" or 'lose". In each round, two cards are drawn, a "winner" and a "loser", the house collects the wagers on the "losing" card and pays the "winners", then you play the next round. Much like craps, there is an endless string of side-bets and markets that can be wagered each round, but like playing the "pass line", this is the simplest form of the game.
The chips pictured above were minted at the Dunes Hotel and Casino in 1983; while it is not known exactly how long they were used, the final turn of Faro in a USA casino was dealt in 1985 at the Ramada Casino in Reno, Nevada.
If you were a gambler in the "Wild West" looking for a game, you were looking for a Faro game. If you were a patron of one of the first legitimate casinos in the nation, Faro tables would have filled the floor. Today, it is impossible to play a game of Faro in any of the 2,000+ casinos nationwide. A chip like this makes me wonder what game will dominate casino pits in 2150