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{{Infobox card game
| title = Post and pair
| subtitle =
| image_link = [[Image:The Cheat with the Ace of Hearts de la Tour.JPG|frameless|upright=1.5]]
| image_caption =
| Family =
| alt_names = Post-and-Pair, Post
| type =
| players = 2-6
| play = Clockwise
| num_cards = 52
| deck = English
| origin = [[England]]
| related = [[Primero]]
| playing_time = 10 min.
| random_chance = Medium
| skills = Bluffing, vying
| footnotes =
}}
'''Post and Pair''' or '''Post and Pare''' is a gambling [[card game]] that was popular in England in the 16th and 17th centuries — another name of the game was '''Pink'''.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=196}} It is based on the same three-card combinations, namely [[prial]], found in related games of this family.

It is much dependent on vying, or betting, requiring repeated staking as well as daring on the part of the players. It is considered a derivative of the game of [[Primero]] and closely resembles another game, called [[Put (card game)|Put]],<ref name=Dallas>Dallas (1863), p. 364.</ref> that was as popular as [[Gleek (card game)|Gleek]] and [[Noddy (card game)|Noddy]] during the [[Tudor dynasty]].

== History ==

Post and pair appears to derive from the game of [[Primero]]. Due to its gaming mechanics and resemblance with Primero and its variants, it is easily implied that post and pair evolved into a faster-paced card game with the addition of rules borrowed from neighboring games, like the Tudor game named post, attested by ''[[The Oxford English Dictionary]]'' from the early 16th to the 17th centuries, which may have survived longer in local versions.<ref name="Willughby">''Francis Willughby's Book of Games: A Seventeenth-century Treatise on Sports, Games and Pastimes'', Francis Willughby; eds. David Cram, Jeffrey Forgeng, Dorothy Johnston; London, 2003; {{ISBN|1-85928-460-4}}; p.&nbsp;275.  Originally published 1672.</ref>

[[Charles Cotton]], in his 1674 ''[[The Compleat Gamester]]'', mentions that Post and Pair was particularly popular in the west of England, as much as [[All Fours (game)|All Fours]] was popular in Kent, and [[Twenty-five (card game)|Fives]] in Ireland.{{sfn|Cotton|1674|p=150}} And if [[Francis Willughby]]'s 1816 ''Book of Games'' gives no rules for the game,<ref name="Willughby" /> Cotton describes it as a three-stake game - stakes being laid for Post, Pair and Seat{{sfn|Cotton|1674|p=150}} - almost identical to [[Three-Card Brag]] (or Three-Stake Brag).<ref>''The Cyclopedia of Cards and Table Games'' by "Professor Hoffmann", London, 1891, p. 50. It is difficult to find any reliable information as to the game of Post, but it is known that the threefold stake is one of its special features, and that the three events whereon the distribution depends, are distinguished by the names of post, pair and seat. It is suggested by Cavendish that these three, but in reverse order, are respectively identical to the three above mentioned.</ref> [[David Parlett]] and [[John McLeod (card game researcher)|John McLeod]] suggest that modern Brag is an extract of Post and Pair.<ref>[http://www.pagat.com/vying/pokerhistory.html ''A History of Poker''], David Parlett and John McLeod, 2010 [2005] at [[Pagat.com]]. Retrieved 30 January 2023.</ref>

== Play ==

Three separate stakes are made by each player. After staking at "post" and then at "pair", and getting two cards, the players stake at "seat". A third card is then dealt face up.<ref name="Willughby"/> The three stakes are won as follows:

* '''Seat'''. The stake goes to the holder of the best single Whist card dealt face up.<ref name=Cavendish>"Cavendish" (1879), p. 61.</ref> The A{{Diamonds}} is the highest card, followed by the other Aces and then the rest in their [[natural order (cards)|natural order]].{{sfn|Cotton|1674|p=150}}

* '''Pair'''.  The stake goes to the player with the best [[set (cards)|set]] i.e. cards of the same [[rank (cards)|rank]], or to the player who can outvie the others into ceding the stake.<ref name="Willughby"/> A [[pair royal]] of aces is the best hand, followed by a pair royal of any three [[court cards]] in order of rank: three kings, three queens, three knaves (jacks), etc. If no one has a pair royal, the highest [[pair (cards)|pair]] wins, failing that, the hand that holds the highest cards wins. If players are still tied, the [[eldest hand]] wins.{{sfn|Cotton|1674|p=150}}<ref name=Dallas/>

* '''Post'''. The stake goes to the player with the best combination of cards totalling, or most approaching, twenty-one points. The best possible combination is two tens and an ace, with court cards counting as ten.{{sfn|Cotton|1674|p=150}}<ref>''The Tudor Interludes'', "The Interlude of Youth", Ian Lancashire; Manchester University Press, 1980; {{ISBN|0-7190-1523-5}}; p. 146.</ref><ref name=Seymour/>{{efn|The rules by Cotton and their subsequent revisions do not mention the typical [[Twenty-One (card game)|Twenty-One]] rule that players whose cards fall short of 21 may ask for one or more cards in the hope of improving their hands, dropping out if their score exceeds 21.}}

Players may [[Vie (cards)|vie]] for ''Pair''. [[Eldest hand]] begins and may vie or pass. Having passed, eldest may come in again, if any others vie. If a player vies, the others must respond in turn by 'raising' the bet or 'seeing' i.e. matching it. In the latter case, the players left in may agree to divide the stakes; otherwise they must show their cards and the best hand wins. If no-one vies, the dealer may double the stakes or just "play it out" i.e. let everyone show their hands and the best hand wins.<ref name=Seymour>''The Complete Gamester in Three Parts'', Richard Seymour; London: J. Hodges, London, 1754; p. 225.</ref>

== Notes ==
As Charles Cotton said in ''The Compleat Gamester'' (1674):{{sfn|Cotton|1674|p=151}}
{{blockquote|1=The vye is what you please to adventure upon the goodness of your own hand; or if it be bad, and you imagine your adversary's is so likewise, then bid him high courageously, by which means you daunt your antagonist, and so bring him to submission. If all the gamesters keep in till all have done, and by consent shew their cards, the best cards carry the game. Now according to agreement those that keep in till last, may divide the stakes, or shew the best card for it. Observe, where the cards fall in several hands of the same sort, as a pair of pair-royal, and so forth, the eldest hand carries it.}}

== Post and Pair in literature ==
Post and Pair was first mentioned in a list of games played by Gargantua of ''[[Gargantua and Pantagruel]]'', a 1532 novel by [[François Rabelais]].{{sfn|Rabelais|1532|p=}}

[[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] mentions the vye ("taunt") of the game, named as "pair", in a dialogue between the character Rosaline and the Princess of France in a conversation about the courtier Berowne, in his early play ''[[Love's Labour's Lost]]'', written in the mid-1590s.{{sfn|Shakespeare|1998|pp=239–240}}
{{blockquote|1=<poem>They are worse fools to purchase mocking so.
That same Berowne I'll torture ere I go.
...
So pair-taunt-like would I o'ersway his state,
That he should be my fool, and I his fate.</poem>
}}

In Ben Jonson's ''Masque of Christmas'', the card game of post and pair is introduced as one of his children,<ref>''The Works of Ben Johnson'', ed. William Gifford; Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1855; p. 717.
{{blockquote|1=<poem>Post and pair, with a pair-royal of oces in his hat,
his garment all done over with pairs and purs,
his squire carrying a box, cards, and counters.</poem>
}}
</ref> thus characterizing him as a knave. According to the ''A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases and Ancient Customs of the Fourteenth Century'', by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, written in 1868, ''pur'' was the term given to the knave or jack in the game of post and pair. It may have been formed by an abbreviation of ''pair-royal'' corrupted into ''purrial'', similar to how ''pair-royal'' has since been otherwise corrupted into ''prial''.{{sfn|Nares|1822|p=403}} However, the trump Jack in some continental games like Swiss [[Jass]] is called ''Puur'' or ''Pur''.

The game is mentioned in Canto Six of [[Walter Scott]]'s epic poem ''[[Marmion (poem)|Marmion]]'' as a "vulgar" game played at Christmas.<ref>Walter Scott, ''Marmion'', canto six: ''The lord, underogating, share/The vulgar game of "post and pair."'' http://www.online-literature.com/walter_scott/marmion/6/</ref>  Post and pair is also prominently mentioned in ''[[A Woman Killed with Kindness]]'' by Thomas Heywood and in the anonymous ''[[Swetnam the Woman-Hater]]'' in which several characters play the game onstage.

== See also ==
* [[Gilet (card game)]]
* [[Primo visto]]

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

== References ==
{{reflist}}

== Literature ==
* "[[Cavendish (author)|Cavendish]] (1879). [https://books.google.com/books?id=S5GIAAAAMAAJ&q=%22best+whist+card%22&pg=PA61 ''Card Essays, Clay's Decisions and Card-Table Talk'']. London: Thos. De La Rue. NY: Scribner & Welford.
* {{cite book | last=Cotton | first=Charles |author-link=Charles Cotton | title=The Compleat Gamester; Or, Instructions how to Play at Billiards, Trucks, Bowls and Chess ... Cards ... Dice, To which is Added the Arts ... of Riding, Racing, Archery, and Cockfighting [by Charles Cotton]. | publisher=Henry Brome | year=1674 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FupmAAAAcAAJ | access-date=22 May 2023}}Often republished with {{cite book |title=Lives of the Gamesters |first=Theophilus |last=Lucas |date=1714 |postscript=–}} e.g. in {{cite book |title=Games and Gamesters of the Restoration |date=2000 |publisher=Ramage Press |isbn=978-1446501764}})
* {{cite journal|last=Dallas |first=Eneas Sweetland  |author-link=Eneas Sweetland Dallas |title=Once a Week |volume=X |page=364 |publisher=Bradbury & Evans | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZflMAAAAMAAJ&q=post| location=London |year=1863}}
* {{cite book |at=Gaming in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries |first=David |last=Miers |title=Regulating Commercial Gambling: Past, Present, and Future |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199276158.003.0002 |isbn=9780199276158 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}
*{{cite book|last=Nares |first=Robert  |author-link=Robert Nares |year=1822 |title=A Glossary: Or Collection of Words, Phrases, Names &c. |location=London |publisher=Robert Triphook }}
*{{cite book |last=Rabelais |first=François |author-link=François Rabelais |year=1532 |title=Gargantua and Pantagruel}}
* {{cite book | last=Shakespeare | first=William |author-link=William Shakespeare | title=Love's Labour's Lost | publisher=Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare | date=1998 | isbn=978-1-904271-10-9 |editor-last=Woudhuysen |editor-first=H.R. |url=https://archive.org/details/loveslabourslost0000shak_l3a2 |url-access=registration}}
'''Attribution'''
* {{EB1911 |wstitle=Post and Pair |volume=22 |page=196}}

== External links ==
{{Wikisource1911Enc|Post and Pair}}
* [http://www.greydragon.org/library/Intro%20Period%20Card%20Games.doc "Introduction to Period Card Games"], Dafydd ap Gwystl; self-published, 6 August 2002
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20050222083554/http://www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-927615-3.pdf Gaming in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries]

{{Non trick-taking card games}}
{{Historical card games}}

[[Category:16th-century card games]]
[[Category:English card games]]
[[Category:Vying games]]