Newmarket (card game)

Newmarket is an English card game of the matching type for any number of players. It is a domestic gambling game, involving more chance than skill, and emerged in the 1880s as an improvement of the older game of Pope Joan. It became known in America as Stops or Boodle before developing into Michigan. In 1981, Newmarket was still the sixth most popular card game in Britain.

History

Newmarket's predecessor was an English gambling game called Pope Joan that had an elaborate staking board in the shape of a rotating multi-compartment dish. Pope Joan's popularity waned in favour of Newmarket in the second half of the 19th century, but the latter was mentioned as early as 1820 in an account of a duke "losing considerably at Newmarket". Its earliest rules were published in the 1850s and another early description appears in The Bazaar, Exchange and Mart in 1875; it differs from later rules in that no spare hand is dealt to increase the number of stop cards.

In America, the game was also known as Newmarket to begin with, but later became known as Stops or Boodle before being superseded there by Michigan in the 1920s. Newmarket continues to be played in the UK, although, like Michigan in the US, it is being displaced by games of the Eights family. The 1885 American Hoyle contains the earliest transatlantic rules for Newmarket.