Panguingue, or pan for short, is a rummy-type gambling card game. In fact, it descends directly from conquian, the patriarch of all rummy games. Pan calls for six, seven or eight players ideally but any number may play. Chips are used for wagering and scorekeeping.

Southeast Asia Origin

Panguingue is thought to have originated among the Tagalogs, natives of the island of Luzon in the Philippines, during the country’s Spanish period, between 1565 and 1898.

“Panguingue,” pronounced “pan-ginn’-gay,” is the English language version of the original Tagalog word, “pangginggi” or “pangguinggui.”

Pops Up In The U.S.

Pan was staple of the gambling halls during the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s and made its way to Nevada, Arizona, Washington and other western states.

The game often was played to pass the time, in bordellos, for example, by ladies of the evening while waiting for customers, and in gambling and pool halls, by laborers away from home.

It reportedly was in those prostitution houses that a unique, sexually suggestive lingo for pan developed. For example, “getting down” refers to placing a bet. The “tops” are the penalty chips players pay for opting not to play a round; the tops go to the round winner. “Being peckered,” is when a player, during a round, can’t make a play called a wagon (two of three cards in a spade valle card meld — see below for explanation) with a matching spade.

In Nevada, panguingue occasionally was found in the casinos throughout much of the 20th century, according to David Schwartz, author of Roll The Bones. In California, the Anti-Gambling Act passed in 1860 outlawed all games of chance in which bets are placed against a house, bank or dealer. Thus, panguingue was and, since, has been allowed.

Generally, though, pan didn’t catch on in the States to the same extent of its cohorts — faro, poker and blackjack/21. That may have been because some games of chance players found it boring.

“Panguingue, to some persons, is a dull and deadly game. Many do not see anything to get excited about, at least from a gambling angle,” The Spokesman-Review noted (Feb. 1, 1935).

Part Of American Culture

The game is said to have been first recorded as part of American lexicon in 1905, in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Another early reference, according to a Miami Herald columnist (Aug. 19, 1945), was in the 1910 book published in Manila, When the Krag is Laid Away, by Chancey McGovern. The passage read: “… when the mujer of the house was too busily preoccupied with the intricacies of panguingue [sic]. (The Filipina woman’s national game. As much as ten cents is lost by some unfortunate housewife in a single afternoon’s playing.)”

Card Deck Variations

For pan games in the Philippines, players used 8 Spanish, 40-card decks, each comprising four suits of these ranks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Jack, Cavalier and King.

Typically in the U.S., the same number of 52-card decks were used but the 8s, 9s and 10s were removed so they included only and all ranks equivalent to those in a Spanish deck.

The number of decks used, however, could vary, often by locale. In the state of Washington, for instance, 10 was the norm.

Sometimes, players removed additional suits from the decks to change the odds. Along with the 8s, 9s and 10s, they may have excluded one suit of spades, one suit of spades and the 3s, 5s and 7s, etc. Historically, throughout California, for example, eliminating two suits of spades from each deck was common.

The Game Rules

Each player antes up 1 chip.

Rotating to the right (versus the more common left), each player is dealt 10 cards, 5 at a time. The remaining cards are placed face down, forming the draw pile. The top card is flipped over, face up, next to the draw pile, to start the discard pile.

Next, every player, again to the right, decides to stand (play) or drop (fold). The droppers forfeit their ante, pay the tops and place their cards at the bottom of the draw pile.

The game objective is to create melds with one’s cards. The first player to meld 11 cards wins the round.

Possible melds are a) 3 cards of the same rank in the same suit; b) 3 cards of the same rank in different suits; and c) 3 consecutive cards in the same suit. With rank melds, aces and kings are the exception; any 3 form a meld.

A winning pan hand

To play, each player draws 1 card, either from the top of the draw pile or the top of the discard pile. With a card from the draw pile, the player must immediately incorporate it into a meld and place the meld face up on the table (an open meld). If he can’t do so, he must place the card face up on the discard pile.

If the player chooses a card from the discard pile, it must be added to an open meld. Otherwise, it must be discarded.  

Caveats: If the card discarded by the previous player is one that fits an open meld of the in-turn player, the in-turn player must draw and use that card.

On every turn, players must discard a card so they always have exactly 10 cards in hand, except on a winning turn when they must have 11.

When a player wins a round, he/she collects the tops, the pot and chips from every other active player according to these conditions:

• For melds of valle, or value, cards (3s, 5s and 7s) in different suits: 1 chip
• For meld of valle cards in the same suit: 4 chips for spades, 2 for others
• For melds of non-valle cards in the same suit: 2 chips for spades, 1 for others
• For melds of 3-2-Ace or King-Queen-Jack: 2 chips for spades, 1 for others

For more comprehensive coverage of the game rules, refer to The Great Panguingue Blog, Hoyle’s Rules of Games or, if available, Peter Burke’s How to Play Pan (Panguingui), the World’s Most Fascinating Card Game (1941).

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Have you ever played pan? What do you think of it?

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When customer Mrs. Curt Whitney entered the Nevada Club at 3 a.m. on a Sunday in May 1953, her shoe allegedly got caught in a hole in the floor, and she fell.

More than a year later, she and her husband sued the casino. She sought $35,000 in damages for injuries to her right leg and back and having been hospitalized at various times for a total of seven weeks. Her husband sued for $12,812.05 for medical and household expenses and loss of his wife’s companionship.

This is one example of the accident liability lawsuits that became common after Nevada legalized gambling in 1931. Here are three more cases, all filed in Reno in 1954:

• Antonio Rodriguez was playing the card game, panguingue, in a gambling club when he allegedly stepped on a beer bottle while rising from his chair and, consequently, broke his ankle. He sought $5,000 in general damages and $1,400 in special damages for medical expenses and lost wages.

U.S. West-themed mural on exterior of Harolds Club in Reno, Nevada

• Mrs. Lillian Walker was stepping onto the escalator in Harolds Club to descend from the second to first floors when her shoe allegedly got caught and she wobbled. An alert casino employee grabbed her to keep her from falling, injuring her back and limbs, she and her husband claimed in their subsequent lawsuit.

She demanded $35,000 for bodily pain and nervous shock; her husband asked for $2,250 for medical expenses and compensation for the injury of his wife.

• Also in Harolds Club, a Mrs. McCall allegedly fell while climbing the stairs near the casino’s entrance, suffering “severe” injuries (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 23, 1954).

She and her husband sued, claiming management had failed to keep the stairs safe. She asked for $35,000 for her injuries; her husband requested medical expenses.

While these incidents truly may have happened, it’s interesting that most occurred in the city’s major gambling clubs and not the rinky dink ones.

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1908

Two deputy sheriffs in the mining camp of Rawhide, Nevada,* were on the take. For a regularly paid fee, they allowed establishments to operate legal games without a license and/or run banned ones as well.

Sometimes they allowed gambling houses that paid heavy license fees on some games to conduct others without paying for a license. The lawmen squeezed these monies from the operators and the saloon owners where such activities occurred.

One proprietor who benefitted from the arrangement was George “Tex” Rickard, owner of The Northern. He paid $760 per quarter for licenses for most of the games in his club. However, he offered other games, both unlawful (stud poker and poker) and lawful (panguingue), without the required legal papers.

This grafting had taken place since Rawhide’s beginning in December 1906, when a prospector discovered a rich gold-silver deposit nearby.

When the Reno newspaper exposed the scheme in early 1908, the state police investigated, discovering “one of the greatest systems of graft ever perpetrated in this state,” noted the Reno Evening Gazette (April 11, 1908). When they learned Rickard refused to obtain the licenses to square with the gaming law, they threatened him with arrest.

The Legal Fallout

Within days, Rickard and his partner were taken to jail and charged with running gambling without licenses.

Two weeks passed before consequences from the graft probe’s findings played out. The district attorney ordered state police officers to collect gambling license fees from Rickard (whose case had been dismissed in the interim) and others operating similarly. The allegedly guilty Rawhide deputy sheriffs were fired and indicted on extortion charges.

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*The Nevada town was about 55 miles southeast of Fallon and 35 miles northeast of Hawthorne.

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Nevada State Prison

1932-1967

Inmates strutted around the Nevada State Prison yard and jingled the brass coins or tokens, in their pockets, to boast their elevated status as winning gamblers of the pen.

Beginning in 1932, convicts ran an open casino on the grounds of this maximum security facility in Carson City.

The warden allowed and didn’t hide it, and the public knew.

Over the ensuing years, the men played craps, panguingue, blackjack, poker, tonk, gin rummy and perhaps non-card games like roulette (although one warden denied that) and bet on sports — all using tokens, $0.05, $0.10, $0.25, $0.50, $1 and $5, as currency.

They did so under supervision in the convicts’ recreation area dubbed the bullpen. The inmates didn’t tolerate cheating, which kept the operations honest. As mandated, winners contributed 10 percent of their receipts to the prison’s inmate welfare fund.

Many prisoners passed the time by gambling, which they said prevented tension and conflict among them. Also, it gave the dealers and winners income and prestige.

Though, as in any casino, a fair amount of losing occurred. “Most of them go broke,” said Art Bernard, the warden between 1951 and 1958 (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 26, 1957).

Breaking The Rules

Ironically, the prison casino lacked a gambling license, a state requirement of any such operation. It violated Nevada gaming law, too, by dealing with “persons of notorious or unsavory reputation or who have extensive police records,” noted columnist Frank Johnson (Nevada State Journal, Jan. 9, 1960). “On the plus side,” he added, “one can say not only all employees, but all patrons as well, have their fingerprints on file with the authorities. And the gaming IS conducted in a location that is ‘easy to police.’”

The fun, however, ended 35 years later, in 1967, when Warden Carl Hocker put a permanent kibosh on the casino and brass.

“I think gambling in prison is degrading, and it’s certainly not constructive,” he said (Nevada State Journal, May 7, 1967). “We’re trying to replace it with constructive, wholesome activities that will contribute to a decent, healthful frame of mind.”

Do you suppose the prisoners then took their gambling underground and switched the currency to something else?

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