Sabacc/Legends

"It's a fool's enterprise."

- Droma

Sabacc, or jhabacc, was a popular card game that was often played for high stakes. Perhaps the most famous sabacc game was the championship round of the Cloud City Sabacc Tournament in which Lando Calrissian lost the Millennium Falcon to Han Solo. Calrissian also won the rights to Cloud City and the title of Baron Administrator in a game of sabacc.

When played professionally, the game was overseen by a dealer, either organic as in Coruscant's Outlander Club, where four-armed Kiughfid dealers passed out the cards and took up money for the house, or as in other locales, where Automated Sabacc dealer droids oversaw proceedings.

The Ryn claimed to have invented sabacc as a means of training one's spiritual development.

Rules
The game of sabacc used a deck of seventy six cards featuring sixty numbered cards divided into four suits, and two copies of eight special cards. Each player was passed four cards which made up their hand at the beginning of the game. The suit and value of the cards would shift to different values at random, unless they were placed in the neutral field in the center of the table.

The object of the game was to create a hand holding the value of twenty three, known as Pure Sabacc, or minus twenty three which would be trumped by a positive twenty three. Negative numbers could be created through the use of the special cards which all, with the exception of the Idiot card, represented a negative number.

At the beginning of each round, a small collection known as the hand pot was collected. This prize was reserved for the player with the best hand, regardless of the over all match winner, who received the sabacc pot. At the end of their turn a player had to discard all but two of their cards. A new round began and new cards were dealt. A player won the game by either calling their hand when they had twenty three, or minus twenty three, or if their hand was below twenty three or above minus twenty three, but closer to either number than their opponent's. Anything over twenty three and under minus twenty three was a bust. A pure zero was also a bust.

Many private games and professional establishments played sabacc using "house rules". House rules used a selection of special modifications to the rules for example often stating that a player could place at most two cards in the neutral field where they were unaffected by shifting, or that an Idiot's Array, consisting of The Idiot, any two and any three would beat anything, even Pure Sabacc, and would win the sabacc pot. Another common house rule was that the bet amount was paid into the sabacc pot on bust, zero, or loss on call.

There were several styles of sabacc play, including Bespin Standard, Empress Teta Preferred, Cloud City Casino, and Corellian Gambit. Each system had slightly different rules. There was also a version where fives were wild. Other variations included Random Sabacc, in which the house rules were changed at random intervals; Force sabacc, which used an altered deck with Light side of the Force and Dark side of the Force themed suits; and one seen in the Lucky Despot where the cards are printed on ceramic tiles.

The Gungans of Otoh Gunga developed a sabacc variant in which low scores prevailed.

Cheating
As with any kind of gambling, the high stakes nature of sabacc often led to cheating. Besides various basic sleight of hand palming tricks, many cheats used a cheater, a small handheld device that could be secretly used to manipulate the game cards and neutral field to give the user an unfair advantage in the game. Another means involved a skifter, a rigged card that was unobtrusively substituted for a normal one in the deck. On some planets, cheating at sabacc could mean death. Force users who play Sabacc may sometimes use the Force to stack the deck, or to view their opponents' cards.

Deck List

 * Coins, Flasks, Sabres, Staves:
 * 1-11
 * Commander (12)
 * Mistress (13)
 * Master (14)
 * Ace (15)




 * Face Cards:
 * Queen of Air and Darkness (-2)
 * Endurance (-8)
 * Balance (-11)
 * Demise (-13)
 * Moderation (-14)
 * The Evil One (-15)
 * The Star (-17)
 * The Idiot (0)

Besides the standard cards listed above, some decks of sabacc also included other types of cards, these non-standard cards included:
 * The Destroyed Starship
 * The Satellite
 * The Wheel
 * Chance
 * Hazard
 * The Universe
 * Legate (ranked card with value of 11, but trumps ordinary 11)

Other uses
"Did you know, old pentapod, that these things were once used for telling fortunes?"

- Lando Calrissian to Vuffi Raa

The sabacc deck was also used for divination and cartomancy. Lando Calrissian became familiar with using sabacc cards for fortune-telling early in his career. In a conversation with Vuffi Raa on the planet Sharu, Lando described the fortune-telling implications of several cards:


 * The Commander of Staves implied "a messenger on a fool's errand" (a card Lando indicated that he frequently associated with himself).
 * The Six of Sabres implied a journey's end.
 * The Destroyed Starship implied "cataclysmic changes in the near future, death and destruction." Lando described it as "the worst card in the whole deck."
 * The Satellite implied "a lot of fairly nasty things...deception, deceit, betrayal."
 * The Wheel implied "luck, both good and bad, the beginning and the ending of things, random chance."
 * The Universe implied that the subject would have the opportunity to do everything he or she wanted to do.

The order in which the cards were drawn suggested their meaning to the subject. The first card described the subject; the second his or her principal opponent or antagonist. The The third card drawn, placed above the others, represented the subject's conscious or stated motivations, while the fourth, placed below the others, represented a deeper, subconscious motive. The fifth card, placed to the left, represented the past; the sixth, placed to the right, represented the immediate future. Cards placed above it represented future obstacles. The final card drawn represented the final outcome.

It is unclear how widespread such use (or belief in its effectiveness) may have been.

Behind the scenes

 * Sabacc likely had its origins in the second draft of the script of the The Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo mentions that his friend Lando Calrissian won Cloud City in a "sabacca game."


 * The Face Cards in the sabacc deck bear a definite resemblance to several of the Major Arcana cards in the Tarot deck, most likely a Rider-Waite deck, given that the value of Endurance (Strength in the Rider-Waite deck) is 8, and Balance (Justice) is 11. Each face card's value seems to correspond with the number of its Major Arcana equivalent. In addition, the number of cards in a sabacc deck (76) is similar to that of a tarot deck, which has 78 cards. The Centran Sabacc deck, used in L. Neil Smith's Lando Calrissian novels (which contain the first named sabacc cards), is even more similar. Further parallels can be found in the use of sabacc cards for fortune-telling - which Lando Calrissian demonstrates in Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu - just as some people use Tarot cards in real life.


 * In the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic duology, sabacc's predecessor, pazaak makes an appearance, though it is not essential to play it in order to progress in either game.


 * In rules and concept, sabacc contains elements of both the real-world games baccarat and blackjack, with the obvious distinction of being played with what is essentially a Tarot deck. Its role in the Star Wars galaxy, however, seems most analogous to poker, while pazaak's role could be seen as similar to blackjack.


 * The suits of a sabacc deck (Coins, Flasks, Staves and Sabres) are based on the so-called Latin or Italo-Spanish suits, Coins, Cups, Staves and Swords.