PAKO PINTO 87 



keeps in mind the cards he has discarded during the three 

 deals, as he may by doing so make a fairly correct guess 

 as to the value of his adversary's hand. When the deals 

 are completed the players bet on their hands and, as in 

 poker, bluffing may be attempted with or without success. 

 These are the outlines of the game, as I have omitted 

 many points uninteresting to any but regular card-players. 

 To enter into all the details and intricacies of golfo would 

 be a question of whole chapters of writing, which could 

 not be otherwise but tiring to the average reader. 



As I have said before, paro pinto is undoubtedly the 

 national gambling game. On pay-days the bulk of the 

 peons, as soon as they receive their wages, sit around a 

 blanket thrown on the ground, where they spend hours 

 trying to add the hard-earned reales ^ of their fellow- 

 labourers to their own slender pay. As a rule the players 

 do not disperse until all the cash has found its way into 

 the pockets of one or two lucky individuals, the rest 

 remaining, to use their own term, Iwipio.'^ Paro piyito 

 may be played by any number of persons. The materials 

 are two dice, with a dice-box. If there be no box the dice 

 are thrown with the hand, but this frequently leads to 

 misunderstandings which sometimes end disastrously, as 

 there are certain individuals who are incomprehensibly 

 lucky when they throw with the hand. In such cases 

 the other players will usually object to a persistence 

 of luck in one and the same quarter, and as they get 

 unreasonable in proportion as they lose, the game may 

 wind up with a wake and a fun;3ral. If anyone care to 

 obtain a good idea of paro pinto, let him take two dice 

 and hold them together so that the sixes are uppermost ; 

 the opposite sides are ones. The former are winning 



' A reale is equal to five pence or ten cents. ^ Cleaned out. 



