Monte Bank

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Setup
3. Laying out the cards
4. Betting
5. The gate
6. The next deal
7. Passing the bank
8. Tips for beginners
9. Variants

Overview

Monte Bank – usually just Monte – is an old Spanish banking game that became the national card game of Mexico and then spread through Texas and the California gold fields in the 19th century. One player, the banker, lays out two pairs of cards. The other players bet on one pair or both. Then the banker turns the deck over: the card that shows, the gate, decides. If a pair holds a card of the same suit as the gate, bets on that pair win; if not, they lose. Ranks don't matter at all.

These rules follow Foster's Complete Hoyle (1897 and later editions), the four-card form also called Spanish Monte. The game is hardly played any more.

• Players: 2–10 – one banker and up to 9 players (the old books call them punters).
• You need: one standard 52-card deck with the 8s, 9s and 10s removed – 40 cards remain (A, 2–7, J, Q, K in each suit), as in a Spanish deck. Chips (or counters, matches) – about 100 per person. Play for chips only.

Setup

1. Choose the first banker, for example whoever draws the highest card.
2. The banker puts their bank on the table – a pile of chips in plain view, for example 50. The bank is everything the banker can lose in this deal.
3. Agree on the smallest and largest bet, for example 1 to 10 chips. So that the bank can always pay, all bets on the table together may not be larger than the bank. Betting the whole bank on one pair is called tapping the bank.
4. The banker shuffles the 40 cards and lets a player cut them (lift off part of the deck and put it underneath).

Laying out the cards

The banker holds the deck face down and:

1. Takes two cards from the bottom of the deck and lays them face up, side by side, on the table: this is the bottom layout.
2. Takes two cards from the top of the deck and lays them face up next to it: this is the top layout.

A layout is simply one pair of cards to bet on.

Betting

Each player may now place chips next to one layout or both (two separate bets). You can't bet on a single card, only on a whole layout.

The gate

When all bets are down, the banker turns the whole deck face up. The card now showing – the old bottom card – is the gate. The banker then settles each layout on its own:

• The layout has a card of the same suit as the gate: the banker pays every bet on it 1 to 1 (bet 3, win 3).
• The layout has no card of the gate's suit: the banker takes every bet on it.

So the banker can win or lose on both layouts with the same gate, or win on one and lose on the other.

Example: The top layout is 7♥ K♣, the bottom layout is 3♠ 2♠. Anna bets 4 chips on the top layout, Ben 2 chips on the bottom layout. The banker turns the deck: the gate is the Q♥. The top layout has a heart, so Anna wins 4 chips. The bottom layout has no heart, so Ben loses his 2 chips to the bank. Had the gate been the 5♠, Ben would have won and Anna lost.

The next deal

The banker puts the four layout cards aside, turns the deck face down again, takes the gate off the bottom and puts it aside too. Without shuffling, the banker lays out two new layouts, the players bet, and a new gate is turned. Each deal (called a coup) uses five cards, so a 40-card deck lasts exactly eight coups.

Passing the bank

When the deck is used up, the bank passes to the left, and the new banker puts up a bank and shuffles all 40 cards. If the banker runs out of chips earlier, the bank passes at once. Agree beforehand how often each player is to be banker (once is enough for a short game) and play until everyone has been banker equally often; whoever then has the most chips wins.

Tips for beginners

• A layout with two different suits wins far more often than one with the same suit twice. With 7♥ K♣, 18 of the 36 remaining cards win; with 3♠ 2♠, only 8 do.
• Look at the other layout too: every card of your suits there is one fewer winning card for you.
• Keep track of the suits already used up: late in the deck, a suit that is mostly gone is a poor bet. That is why some tables shuffle early (see Variants).
• The bank wins in the long run, because most layouts have fewer winning cards than losing ones. Keep your bets small.

Variants

Optional – agree before you start.

• Two-card Monte (Mexican Monte): the banker lays out only one card from the bottom and one from the top – two single-card layouts. The gate is turned in the same way, and a layout whose card matches the gate's suit wins 1 to 1. Each coup now uses three cards, so a deck lasts 13 coups (the last card is not used).
• Generous banker: in two-card Monte, according to the German Wikipedia, some bankers paid 3 to 1 when both layout cards and the gate were all of the same suit.
• Shorter banks: the bank passes after an agreed number of coups, for example five, and the cards are shuffled then.