[Trente-et-Quarante Casino Gambling:] Influence de l’Esprit Aleatoire sur L’Économie Politique et Sociale, Trente-et-Quarante Dévoilé.

Influence of the Aleatory Spirit on the Political and Social Economy, Trente-et-Quarante Unveiled; with manuscript annotations

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Still played today in France, Italy, Monaco, and other Continental European casinos, Trente et Quarante (Thirty and Forty), i.e. Rouge et Noir (Red and Black), is a French gambling card game requiring a specialized betting table.

This rare gambling treatise, with only two known copies in the United States and one in France, is divided into two parts comprising nine chapters. In the first, the author reflects on the role of chance in revolutions and civilizations, drawing in part on his own experiences in Egypt. The second part, nearly ninety pages and the core of the work, is devoted to the practical problem of how to play—and profit from—the game of Trente et Quarante.

The text includes ten tables of exercises detailing some 7,300 coups, or hands of play. Contemporary pencil annotations throughout these tables and elsewhere in the text attest to its use as a working gambling manual. These notes include mathematical calculations, alterations to graphs and figures, and, in one instance, an algebraic formula.

The author, J. Jouet de Lanciduais, published in the same year a companion player’s guide to Trente et Quarante and roulette, Guide de Jouer à la Roulette et au Trente-et-Quarante, ou la Chance…, which promised to overcome chance through calculation. That work was based on his extensive firsthand experience, reportedly encompassing more than 200,000 hands played at European casinos.

Price: $450.00