Chips carry no value
The chips are counters and nothing else. They cannot be bought, sold or exchanged for money, goods or credit, and no cash is handled in the room at any point.
Home / Card Room
A green cloth, and nothing staked
When the kitchen finishes service, the library on the first floor becomes a room given over to cards as a social pastime. It is played with symbolic chips: no money is staked, no prizes are paid, and no gambling of any kind takes place.
Symbolic chips only
The card room
An old habit, given a decent room
The habit is old and very much of this city: after dinner nobody leaves. A cordial is ordered, a deck comes out, and the evening stretches. All we did was give that habit a decent room — two tables in cloth, eight seats each, warm light from above and a door that closes.
The game is a pretext for company. Anyone who has never played finds a beginners' table on Thursday; anyone who has played for years prefers Saturday, when the rhythm turns more serious and the tone stays exactly the same.
- Two tables of eight seats — never more than sixteen guests in an evening.
- Thursday — the beginners' table, with the rules explained from scratch.
- Friday and Saturday — open tables from half past ten.
- Last Tuesday of the month — a two-hour workshop on strategy.
- Adults only, and always by reservation.
“What you win is a conversation, not a prize.”
How the room works
Three things worth knowing
We describe the room plainly, because the plain description is the whole point of it.
Sixteen seats, no more
Two tables, eight seats each. Because the number is small, a seat is put aside in advance rather than found on the night.
One room among many
The card room is a room, not the reason the house exists. Most guests spend an evening here without ever going upstairs, and that is entirely the idea.