[Ads-l] tunk/tonk [was Re: Antedating of "Strip Poker"]
Wilson Gray
hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sat Oct 12 05:58:14 UTC 2019
FWIW, I've never played either tonk or whist as a form of gambling nor have
I known anyone who did so. IMO, this is merely coincidental. Gambling just
wasn't a thing, but alcohol and tobacco were big things.
I W:pediaed bid whist without finding anything worthy of note. In the case
of the Wikipedia description of tonk, I found many fairly trivial
distinctions between the game as played in StL and the game as played by
W:pedia. The biggest distinction was the lack of any mention of "big tonk"
- a dealt hand totaling 50 pts. and "little tonk" - a dealt hand totaling
49 pts.
Should there be any further interest in this game, cf.
https://www.pagat.com/rummy/tonk.html
which is essentially a description of the StL version of the game, but also
lacking the terms, "big tonk/little tonk," though it defines them without
naming them.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain
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