Fan-Tan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fan-Tan, or fantan (simplified Chinese: 番摊; traditional Chinese: 番攤; pinyin: fāntān, literally "repeated divisions") is a form of gambling long played in China. It has similarities to roulette.
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[edit] History
Fan-tan is no longer as popular as it once was, having been replaced by modern casino games, and other traditional Chinese games such as Mah Jong and Pai Gow. However, it was once a favorite pastime of the Chinese in America. Jacob Riis, in his famous book about the underbelly of New York, How the Other Half Lives (1890), wrote of entering a Chinatown fan-tan parlor: "At the first foot-fall of leather soles on the steps the hum of talk ceases, and the group of celestials, crouching over their game of fan tan, stop playing and watch the comer with ugly looks. Fan tan is their ruling passion."
San Francisco's large Chinatown was also home to dozens of fan-tan houses in the 19th century. The city's former police commissioner Jesse B. Cook wrote that in 1889 Chinatown had 50 fan-tan games, and that "in the 50 fan tan gambling houses the tables numbered from one to 24, according to the size of the room."
Fan-tan is still played at Macau casinos, where play goes on day and night, every day of the week, and bets can be made from 5 cents to 500 dollars.
[edit] The game
The game is simple. A square is marked in the centre of an ordinary table, or a square piece of metal is laid on it, the sides being marked 1, 2, 3 and 4. The banker puts on the table a double handful of small buttons, beads, coins, dried beans, or similar articles, which he covers with a metal bowl, or "tan koi".
The players then bet on the numbers, setting their stakes on the side of the square which bears the number selected. (Players can also bet on the corners, for example between No. 2 and No. 3). When all bets are placed, the bowl is removed, and the "tan kun" or croupier uses a small bamboo stick to remove the buttons from the heap, four at a time, until the final batch is reached. If it contains four buttons, the backer of No. 4 wins; if three, the backer of No. 3 wins, and so on.
A 5% commission is deducted from the stake by the banker, and the winner wins three times the amount of his stake thus reduced.
[edit] Other uses
- Fantan was a nickname given to Lon (Brandon de Wilde) by Hud Bannon (Paul Newman) in the classic western film Hud.
- Fan-Tan is a 2005 novel that was conceived by actor Marlon Brando and director Donald Cammell in 1979.
- Fan-Tan is a band formed in Chapel Hill, NC and now residing in Brooklyn, NY (http://www.myspace.com/fantanmusic).
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
