Basset (French bassette, from the Italian bassetta), also known as barbacole and hocca, is a gambling game using cards, that was considered one of the most polite.

According to DELI (Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana), the word Basetta is first recorded in the first half of the 15th century.

[1] The game Basset is described by a few authors as having been invented in 1593 by a noble Venetian named Pietro Cellini,[2] who was punished with exile in Corsica for his contrivance.

[3][4] It may have been devised out of the game of Hocca, Hoca or even Hoc, considered the precursor and an outlawed form of Italian roulette at which people lost considerable sums of money and also an early iteration of Biribi, which was brought into fashion by Cardinal Mazarin.

The game was very popular at the court of King Charles II, and even after 15 January 1691 when Louis XIV issued an order from the privy council, by which he expressly forbade not only the officers belonging to his army, but likewise all other persons of whatever sex or denomination to play at Hoca, Pharaoh, Barbacole and Basset.

[5] The sums of money lost in France at this game were so considerable that the nobility were in danger of being undone after many persons of distinction were ruined.

The advantages of the dealer arise in many ways, but mainly from the temptations for adventurous players to increase their stakes on certain desperate chances, which rarely turn up, and which in the long run told largely in favor of the bank.

Where licenses were otherwise conceded for keeping a public Basset table in France, the stakes were strictly limited to twelve pence.

Basset migrated to England in about 1677, introduced by a croupier called Morin,[6] but never caught on outside Court circles on account of its costliness and the heavy risks it entailed on the players.

However, it was "of so bewitching a nature," says our old writer, "by reason of the several multiplications and advantages which it seemingly offered to the unwary punter, that a great many like it so well that they would play at small game rather than give out; and rather than not play at all would punt at six-penny, three-penny, nay, a two-penny bank, – so much did the hope of winning the quinze-et-le-va and the trente-et-le-va intoxicate them."

This was a truth so acknowledged in France that the king ordered, by public edict, that the privilege of a tallière (banker) should be allowed only to the chief cadets (sons of noblemen).

If a rank is revealed as both the players' and the bank's (twins, a tie) the draw is null and no wagers (or parlays) are lost or paid.

The glossary entry for The Pay in The Compleat Gamester mentions the doubling of the player's wager if "by this adventure Fortune favors him" after having already established the 1:1 payout of whatever their first stake may be on their first win.

This accounts for both the number of corners altered before the described quinze-et-le-va (the first being the 2:1, then the 7:1, and third the 15:1) and gives the mathematical edge to the bank for which the game of Basset is historically infamous.

After the fasse was turned up, and the talliere and croupiere (bet collector, similar to a stickman) had looked round the cards on the table, and taken advantage of the money laid on them, the former proceeded with his deal; and the next card appearing, whether the king, queen, ace, or whatever it might be, won for the player (1–1 payout), the latter might receive it, or making paroli (parlay their bet), as before said, go on to sept-et-le-va (7–1 payout).

According to the rules of the game, the last card turned up was for the advantage of the talliere; although a player might have one of the same sort, still it was allowed to him as one of the dues of his office, he (the tallière) paid nothing on it.

By 1870 the game as described in England used a mixture of French and English words and spellings:[14] Basset has been the object of mathematical calculations.