Card game term for
cash used for reckoning the results of the game. Examples of popular hard-score games are
poker,
blackjack,
solo, and
nap, as well as pretty much all casino games (although it is a stretch to call some of those "card games").
Hard score can range from payouts of a few cents to several-thousand-dollar bets, depending more on the crowd than the game. Hard score is most interesting when the game is zero-sum, meaning that all the cash changes hands from one player to another, rather than involving a bank. This distinction makes blackjack and the abomination known as baccarat more accurately termed banking games.