Published: April 25, 2026 | Time to read: 4 minutes | By Sophia Lane
Most writing about forgotten casino games treats them as curiosities. They are more interesting as evidence: the games that disappeared and the games that survived differ in consistent ways, and the pattern explains a good deal about what a modern casino floor looks like.
Faro
Faro dominated American gambling through the nineteenth century — more widely played than poker, and the game most associated with frontier gambling houses. Players bet on which card would appear next from a dealing box, with a very low house edge when dealt honestly.
That last clause is why it vanished. The edge was so thin that operating it profitably and operating it honestly were in tension, and rigged dealing boxes were manufactured and sold openly. The game’s reputation collapsed, and it was largely gone by the middle of the twentieth century. Faro did not lose to a better game; it lost to the impossibility of trusting it.
Trente et quarante
A French card game, still found in a handful of European casinos, in which the dealer lays two rows and the winner is the row totalling closer to thirty-one. Its house edge is around 1.1% with the insurance option, competitive with anything on a modern floor.
It faded for a reason that has nothing to do with its mathematics: it is slow, it requires a dedicated table and a trained dealer, and it produces relatively few decisions per hour. Floor space is allocated by revenue per square metre, and a game that deals slowly loses that comparison regardless of how good it is.
Sic bo, and the games that moved rather than died
Sic bo — three dice, a large betting layout — never disappeared, but its distribution changed completely. It remains common in Asian casinos and rare elsewhere, and it has found a second life online, where a large betting layout costs nothing to display and no dealer is required.
This is the more common fate. Boule, banca francesa and several regional card games did not die; they contracted to the regions where they were already familiar, because a casino will not train staff for a game nobody at the table knows.
What the survivors have in common
The games still on a modern floor share four properties, and the ones that disappeared usually lacked at least two:
- Fast rounds. Revenue follows the number of decisions per hour, which is why slots outperform every table game on the floor.
- Simple rules. A game that needs explaining loses players at the moment they are most willing to play.
- A verifiable edge. After faro, no game survived that players suspected of being riggable.
- Low operating cost. A dedicated dealer and a dedicated table are expensive; a screen is not.
Online distribution changed the fourth condition entirely, which is why some games that had contracted to near-extinction are more available now than they were in 1990. It has not changed the first three.
Frequently asked questions
What was faro and why did it disappear?
A nineteenth-century card game in which players bet on which card would appear next from a dealing box. Its house edge was very low when dealt honestly, which made honest operation unprofitable and cheating widespread; rigged boxes were sold openly, the game’s reputation collapsed and it was effectively gone by the mid twentieth century.
Are any forgotten casino games still playable?
Some. Trente et quarante survives in a few European casinos, sic bo is common in Asia and available online, and boule appears regionally. Faro is essentially extinct outside historical demonstrations.
Why do casinos drop games that players enjoy?
Floor space is allocated by revenue per square metre, and that follows the number of decisions per hour. A slow game with a dedicated dealer loses that comparison even when it is popular with the people who play it.
Did any game disappear because it was too good for players?
Faro comes closest, though the mechanism was indirect: its edge was too thin to operate honestly at a profit, so it was widely rigged and lost the trust it needed to survive.
Has online gambling revived any old games?
Yes. Games whose cost was mostly staff and floor space — sic bo is the clearest example — are far more available online than they were in physical casinos, because a large betting layout costs nothing to display.
