Lansquenet
A German banking game named after 15th-16th century mercenaries, first referenced by Rabelais in 1534 — a direct precursor to Faro and Baccarat, and ancestor of Italian Zecchinetta.
Coming soon — not yet playable
Rules
Lansquenet (also spelled Landsknecht, after the German mercenary soldiers it's named for) is a banking game rather than a hand-comparison game: one player acts as banker, and every other player bets against the bank rather than against each other.
The banker deals cards face up one at a time into two piles — a "table" pile (for the players) and a "bank" pile (for the banker) — continuing until a card's rank matches a card already showing in either pile. Whichever pile gets the matching rank first determines the outcome: if the match lands in the table pile, the banker pays out players who bet on that rank; if it lands in the bank pile, the banker collects.
Historical note: Lansquenet is documented as a direct precursor to both Faro and Baccarat (two much more widely known banking games), and gaming historians trace a line from Lansquenet through to Italian games like Zecchinetta (both also in this library) — making it a useful missing link between Germany's card-gambling tradition and Italy/France's banking-game tradition.
Strategy notes: As with other historical banking games in this library, there's no bluffing or hand-reading between players — the only real decisions are which rank to back and, for the banker, managing risk across the whole table simultaneously.
Common house rules
Rotate the bank
As with Faro and Zecchinetta, most modern revivals rotate who deals as banker every round or every hand rather than fixing one player as banker for an entire session.
Compare directly to Faro
If your table already knows Faro (also in this library), Lansquenet will feel very familiar — the core 'match a rank against the bank' mechanic is essentially the same lineage, just an earlier, simpler version.
A historical missing link
Lansquenet's main value at a mixed table is showing how Germany's, Italy's, and France's banking-game traditions connect — pair it with Faro, Basset, and Zecchinetta for a full 'banking games through history' rotation.
Related games
Based on shared category, origin, and rules that reference each other.
Basset
A 17th-century Italian banking game, brought to fashionable prominence at the French court, in which players bet on cards turning up from the banker's deck — a direct ancestor of Faro.
Learn the rules →Faro
A once-massively popular banking card game (also called Pharaoh) that dominated American and European gambling halls for over two centuries, simplifying Basset's mechanic into a fast, simple bet-on-a-card game.
Learn the rules →Naqsh
A banking game from the Ganjifa card tradition, which originated in 15th-century Persia and flourished at the Mughal courts of India — players bet on reaching specific card-total combinations.
Learn the rules →Zecchinetta
An old Italian gambling card game, close cousin to games like Basset and Faro, in which a banker deals cards one at a time and players bet on whether a matching card appears before the banker's own.
Learn the rules →