Lydia's Lottery

I had a question about the "Lottery" game that they were playing.

According to a book called Hoyles Games (1817),

She was playing a simple card game called Lottery.

As you can see it is merely a game of chance, no skill required:

The cards being shuffled and cut by the left hand person, one dealer gives every person a card, face down, for the prize, on which is to be placed different values of counters from the pool,at the option of the person to whom each card has been given.

The second dealer then delivers to each player from the other pack, a card for the ticket. Next the cards are turned, by order of the manager, and whoever happens to have a corresponding card takes the prize upon the card dealt to him and those remaining undrawn, are returned to the hand…..

Just the sort of game to engross Lydia, a girl not known for her towering intellect.

For gaming counters at Mrs Phillips’s Meryton home ,we understand that the company used “fish”:

Elizabeth went away with her head full of him. She could think of nothing but of Mr. Wickham, and of what he had told her, all the way home; but there was not time for her even to mention his name as they went, for neither Lydia nor Mr. Collins were once silent. Lydia talked incessantly of lottery tickets, of the fish she had lost and the fish she had won; Mr. Collins, in describing the civility of Mr. and Mrs. Philips, protesting that he did not in the least regard his losses at whist, enumerating all the dishes at supper, and repeatedly fearing that he crouded his cousins, had more to say than he could well manage before the carriage stopped at Longbourn House.

(Chapter 16)

Fish counters were commonly used in 18th and early 19th century gaming tables and could be made from a variety of materials.

The above information was taken from a blogpost at austenonly.com