The full title to "The Compleat Gamester" is: "The Compleat Gamester: or Instructions - How to play at Billiards, Trucks, Bowls and Chess - together with all manner of usual and most Gentile Games either on Cards or Dice - to which is added the Arts and Mysteries of Riding, Racing, Archery and Cock-Fighting"
The Compleat Gamester was written in Restoration England by a gentleman named Charles Cotton who was a friend of Izaak Walton, author of "The Compleat Angler". "The Compleat Gamester" is noteable not only because it was the first compendium of games in English giving an intimate snapshot of gaming in Restoration England, but because of Cotton's unaffected and penetrating observations about gamblers and gambling. In particular this work is noteworthy for Cotton's "enchanting witchery" definition of gambling, his description of a gaming house and his brilliant characterisation of a gambler. (To faciliate understanding, a little punctuation and spelling has been updated and a short explanation follows some terms.)
Reader, I was once resolved to have let this ensuing Treatise to have stepped naked into the World, without so much as the least rag of an Epistle to defend it a little from the cold welcome it may meet with in its travails; but knowing that not only custom expects but necessity requires it, give me leave to show you the motives inducing to this present publication.
It is not (I'll assure you) any private interest of my own that caused me to adventure on this subject, but the delight and benefit of every individual person; Delight to such who will pass away there spare minutes in harmless recreation if not abused; and profit to all, who by inspecting all manner of Games may observe the cheats and abuses and so be armed against the injuries may accrue thereby.
Certainly there is no man so severe to deny the lawfulness of Recreation; There was never any Stoic found so cruel, either to himself or nature, but at some time or other he would unbend his mind, and give it liberty to stray into some more pleasant walks, than the miry heavy ways of his own sour, wilful resolutions. You may observe the Heathen Sages of the first world founded with their Laws their Feasts, with their Labours, their Olympics, with their Warfare, their Triumphs. Nay at this day the severest Dionysian Pedagogue will give his Scholars their Play days and Breakings up ... And the most covetous masters will tie their servants but to certain hours; every toil exacting as ex officio, or out of duty some time for Recreation. I myself have observed in the course of many men of exceeding strict lives and conversation , to whom although severity of profession, infirmity of body, extremity of age, or such like have taken away all actual recreation, yet have their minds begot unto themselves some habits or customs of delight, which have in as large measure given them contentment whether they were their own or borrowed, as if they had been the sole actors of the same. Furthermore, Recreation is not only lawful but necessary:
...
Now what Recreation this should be I cannot prescribe, nor is it requisite to confine any to one sort of pleasure, since herein Nature takes to herself an especial Prerogative for what to one is most pleasant to another is most offensive. Some seeking to satisfy the Mind, some the Body and others both in a joint motion. To this end I have laid before you what variety of pastimes I could collect for the present, leaving the rest (as you like these) to be supplied hereafter. Mistake me not, it is not my intention to make Gamesters by this Collection, but to inform all in part how to avoid being cheated by them: If I am imperfect in my discoveries, impute it to my being no professed Gamester, and the hatred I bear that Hellish society; by whom I know I shall be laughed at, and with whom if I should converse, I might sooner by my study come to be nature's Secretary, and unriddle all her Arcana's than collect from them any new unpractised secret, by which they bubble ignorant credulity, and purchase money and good apparel with everlasting shame and infamy.
To conclude, let me advise you, if you play (when your business will permit) let not a covetous desire of winning another's money engage you to the losing of your own; which will not only disturb your mind, but by the disreputation of being a Gamester, if you lose not your estate, you will certainly lose your credit and good name, than which there is nothing more valuable. Thus hoping you will be thus advised, and will withal excuse my Errors, I shall ever study how to serve you , and subscribe myself a well-willer to all men.
Gaming is an enchanting Witchery, gotten betwixt Idleness and Avarice: An itching Disease that makes some scratch the head whilst others, as if they were bitten by a Tarantula, are laughing themselves to death; or lastly, it is a paralytical distemper, which, seizing the arm the man cannot choose but shake his elbow. It has this ill property above all other Vices, that it renders a man incapable of prosecuting any serious action, and makes him always unsatisfied with his own condition; he is either lifted up to the top of mad joy with success, or plunged to the bottom of despair by misfortune, always in extremes, always in a storm; this minute the Gamester's countenance is so serene and calm, that one would think nothing could disturb it and the next minute so stormy and tempestuous that it threatens destruction on to it self and others and as he is transported with joy when he wins, so losing he is tossed upon the billows of a high dwelling passion till he hath lost fight with both sense and reason. [page 1]
...
This restless man, the miserable Gamester, is the proper subject of every man's pity. Restless I call him, because (such is the itch of play) either winning or losing he can never rest satisfied, if he wins, he thinks to win more, if he loses he hopes to recover. To this man's condition the saying of Hannibal to Marcellus may be fitly applied that ... he could not be quiet, either Conqueror, or Conquered. Thus have I heard of some who with five pounds have won four hundred pounds in one night, and the next night have lost it to a sum not half so much; others who have lost their estates and won them again with addition, yet could not be quiet till they lost them irrecoverably. [page 3]
And therefore fitly was that question propounded, Whether men in Ships at Sea were to be accounted among the living or the dead, because there were but few inches betwixt them and drowning. The same query may be made of great Gamesters, though their estates be never so considerable, Whether they are to be esteemed poor or rich, since there are but few Casts at Dice betwixt a rich man (in that circumstance) and a beggar. [pages 3 and 4]
...
[After various accounts of the practices used to cheat players] Consider the further inconveniences of Gaming as they are ranked under these heads.
First, if the House find you free to the Box and a constant Caster, you shall be treated with Suppers at night, and a Caudle [hot drink] in the morning, and have the honour to be styled a Lover of the House, whilst your money lasts, which certainly cannot be long; for here you shall be quickly destroyed under pretence of kindness as men were by the Lamiae of old ...
Secondly, consider how many persons have been ruined by play, I could nominate a great many, some who have had great estates have lost them, others having good employments have been forced to desert them and hide themselves from their Creditors in some foreign Plantation by reason of those great debts they had contracted through Play.
Thirdly, this course of life shall make you liable to so many affronts and manifold vexations, as in time may breed distraction. ...
Fourthly, is it not extreme folly for a man that hath a competent estate to play whether he or another man shall enjoy it; and if his estate be small, then to hazard even the loss of that, and to reduce himself to absolute beggary; I think it is madness in the highest degree. [pages 17 to 19]
Some say he was born with cards in his hands, others that he will die so; but certainly it is all his life, and whether he sleeps or wakes he thinks of nothing else. He speaks the language of the Game he plays at, better than the language of his Country; and can less endure a solecism in that this: he knows no Judge but the Groom-porter [court officer responsible for supervising gambling], no Law but that of the Game at which he is so expert all appeal to him, as subordinate Judges to the supreme ones. He loves Winter more than Summer, because it affords more Gamesters, and Christmas more than any other time because there is more gaming then. He gives more willingly to the Butler than to the Poor-box, and is never more religious than when he prays he may win. He imagines he is at play when he is at Church; he takes his Prayer-book for a Pack of Cards and thinks he his shuffling when he turns over the leaves. This man will play like Nero when the City is on fire or like Archimedes when it is sacking, rather than interrupt his Game. If play hath reduced him to poverty, then he is like one a drowning, who fastens upon any thing next at hand. Amongst other of his shipwracks he hath happily lost shame, and this want supplies him. No man puts his brain to more use than he; for his life is a daily invention, and each meal a new stratagem, and like a flie will boldly sup at every man's cup. He will offer you a quart of Sack out of his joy to see you, and in requital of this courtesy you can do not less than pay for it. His borrowings are like Subsidies, each man a shilling or two, as he can well dispend, which they lend him not with the hope of being repaid, but that he will come no more. Men shun him at length as they do an Infection, and having done with the Aye as his clothes to him, hung on as long as he could, at last drops off. [pages 21 and 22]
Hazzard is a proper name for this Game; for it speedily makes a man or undoes him; in the twinkling of an eye either a Man or a Mouse.
This Game is played but with two dice ... [page 168]
...
Certainly Hazzard is the most bewitching game that is played on the Dice; for when a man begins to play he knows not when to leave off; and having once accustomed himself to play at Hazzard he hardly ever after minds anything else. I have seen an old man about the Age of Seventy play at an Ordinary when his own eyes were so defective that he was forced to help them with a pair of Spectacles; and having an opportunity one day to speak to him, How a man of his years could be so vain and boyish still to mind play; insisting withal upon the folly of that action to Hazzard his money when he had not sight enough remaining to discern whether he had won or lost; besides Sir, said I, you cannot but hear how you are derided every time you come to the Ordinary; one says, here comes he that cannot rest quiet, but will cry without the rattle of the Dice; another cries, certainly such a one plays by the ear; for he cannot see to play. Let them talk what they will said the Gentleman, I cannot help it, I have been for above forty years so used to play, that should I leave it off now, I were as good stop those Issues about me, which have been instrumental in the preservation of my life to this length of time.
To conclude, happy is he that having been much inclined to this time-spending-money-wasting Game, hath took up in time, and resolved for the future never to be concerned with it more; but more happy is he that hath never heard the name thereof. [pages 172 and 173]
{Just to show Cotton was no prude}
Cocking is a sport or pastime so full of delight and pleasure, that I know not any Game in that respect is to be preferred before it, and since the Fighting-Cock hath gained so great an estimation among the Gentry, in respect to this noble recreation I shall here propose it before all the other Games of which I have afore succinctly discoursed ... [page 206]
Further details may be obtained from Know the Odds Inc
Go back to Know the Odds Inc home page