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re equal for the players and for the bankers. It will also be observed that the arrangement is one which strongly favors the idea (always encouraged by the proprietors of gaming houses) that the bankers have little interest in the result. For the bank does not back either color. The players have all the backing to themselves. If they choose to stake more in all on the red than on the black, it becomes the bank's interest that black should win; but it was by the players' own acts that black became for the time the bank's color. And not only does this suggest to the players the incorrect idea, that the bank has little real interest in the game, but it encourages the correct idea, which it is the manifest interest of the bankers to put very clearly before the players, that everything is fairly managed. If the bank chose a color, some might think that the cards, however seemingly shuffled, were in reality arranged, or else were so manipulated as to make the bank's color win oftener than it should do. But since the players themselves settle which shall be the bank's color at each trial, there cannot be suspicion of foul play of this sort.
We now come to the bank's advantage on the
chances. The number of spots in the black and red compartments may be equal. In this case (called by Hoyle a refait) the game is drawn; and the players may either withdraw, increase, or diminish their stakes, as they please, for a new game, if the number of spots in each compartment is any except 31. But if the number in each be 31 (a case called by Hoyle a refait trente-et-un), then the players are not allowed to withdraw their stakes. And not only must the stakes remain for a new game, but, whatever happens on this new trial, the players will receive nothing. Their stakes are for the moment impounded (or technically, according to Hoyle, en prison). The new game (called an apres), unless it chances to give another refait, will end in favor of either rouge or noir. Whichever compartment wins, the players in that compartment save their stakes, but receive nothing from the bank; the players who have put their stakes in the other compartment lose them. De Morgan says here, not quite correctly, ' should the bank win it takes the stakes, should the bank lose the player recovers his stakes.' This is incorrect, because it at least suggests the incorrect idea that the bank may either win or the stakes go clear; whereas in reality, except in the improbable event of all the players backing one color, the bank is sure to win something, viz., either the stakes in the red or those in the black compartment, and the only point to be settled is whether the larger or the smaller of these probably unequal sums shall pass to the bank's exchequer. If the apres gives a second refait, the stakes still remain impounded,
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