[Illustration: 🃉 🂸 🃗 🃆 🂥] 254 to 1 _=Flush.=_ All five cards of one suit, but not in sequence. [Illustration: 🂡 🂮 🂨 🂥 🂣] 508 to 1 _=Full Hand.=_ Three of one kind, and two of another kind; no useless cards. [Illustration: 🃅 🂥 🃕 🂽 🂭] 693 to 1 _=Fours.=_ Four cards of one kind, and one useless card. [Illustration: 🃆 🂦 🃖 🂶 🂾*] 4164 to 1 _=Straight flush.=_ Five cards of the same suit, in sequence with one another. [Illustration: 🃈 🃇 🃆 🃅 🃄] 72192 to 1 _=Royal Flush.=_ A straight flush which is ace high.
Those who are willing to bet a similar amount on the possibilities of their hands put up a similar amount. Those who decline are not given any cards. There are no straddles, raises, or antes. Immediately after the deal each player who is in the pool draws cards, the age first. There are then two ways to play: The hands are shown and the best wins; or, beginning with the age, each player may say if he will back his hand against the field; _i.e._, all the others in the pool. If he will, he must put up as much as their combined stakes. He cannot be raised; but if any one player or combination of players call him, and one of them can beat his hand, the field divide the pool. For instance: Age makes it a blue, and three others stay with him.
Handy Dandy I. Handy dandy, Sugary candy-- Top or bottom? Handy spandy, Jack a dandy-- Which good hand will you have? --Halliwell s _Dictionary_: _Nursery Rhymes_, p. 216. II. Handy dandy riddledy ro-- Which will you have, high or low? --Halliwell s _Nursery Rhymes_, p. 216. III. Handy pandy, Sugary candy, Which will you have-- Top or bottom? --London (A. B. Gomme).
If he knocks off any of the Cots and Twisses nearer to the players than the Hob is, he claims them. The other players try to knock the Hob away with their key-stones from any Cots and Twisses that may not have been claimed; and if any key-stone touches Hob after all have thrown, the owner cannot claim any Cots and Twisses.--Earls Heaton (Herbert Hardy). Each player selects a Cast or stone to pitch with; on another stone, called the Hob, the Cots and Twys are placed; at some distance Scops are set in the ground. First the players pitch from the Hob to the Scop, and the one who gets nearest goes first. He then pitches at the Hob, and if he knocks off the stakes he has them, provided his Cast is nearer to them than the Hob is; in failure of this, the other player tries. In pitching up, one Cast may rest on another, and if the boy whose stone is underneath can lift it up to knock the other Cast away, it has to remain at the place to which it has been struck; if he does not succeed in doing this, the second player may lift off his Cast and place it by the first. Whoever knocks off the stakes, they go to the boy whose Cast is nearest to them. The Hob and Scop are usually three yards apart. The Cot was a button off the waistcoat or trousers, the Twy one off the coat, and, as its name implies, was equal to two Cots.
If either of these is of the same denomination as either of the hand cards, it must be placed with them, and another card dealt; because all bets must be made on single cards. Having two cards, one for the players and one for himself, the banker turns up cards one at a time. If he draws the same denomination as the players’ card, he wins all the bets upon it. If he draws his own denomination, he loses all bets upon the other card. If he draws a card that matches neither, and is not in the hand cards, it is placed on the table, and the players can bet upon it. As soon as the players’ card is matched, the banker withdraws both cards, but he cannot withdraw his own card. All cards matching the hand cards must be placed with them. TABLE GAMES. The common form of folding chess-board provides a field for three of our best known games; Chess, Checkers, and Backgammon, which are generally spoken of as “table games,” although, strictly speaking, Backgammon is the only game of Tables. These three games were probably played long before history noticed them, and they have survived almost all ancient forms of amusement.
These figures are by the country people called _nine men s morris_, or _merrils_; and are so called because each party has nine men. These figures are always cut upon the green turf, or leys as they are called, or upon the grass at the end of ploughed lands, and in rainy seasons never fail to be choked up with mud (Farmer). _Nine men s morris_ is a game still played by the shepherds, cow-keepers, &c., in the midland counties, as follows:--A figure (of squares one within another) is made on the ground by cutting out the turf; and two persons take each nine stones, which they place by turns in the angles, and afterwards move alternately, as at chess or draughts. He who can play three in a straight line may then take off any one of his adversary s, where he pleases, till one, having lost all his men, loses the game (Alchorne). The following is the account of this game given by Mr. Douce in the _Illustrations of Shakespeare and of Ancient Manners_, 1807, i. 184:-- This game was sometimes called the _nine mens merrils_ from _merelles_, or _mereaux_, an ancient French word for the jettons, or counters, with which it was played. The other term, _morris_, is probably a corruption suggested by the sort of dance which, in the progress of the game, the counters performed. In the French _merelles_ each party had three counters only, which were to be placed in a line in order to win the game.