casino gambling

Human nature is probably the biggest factor in the history of gambling, but it seems that gambling has been around since the beginning of time and will, apparently, exist forever. Gambling is a form of entertainment that not only spans centuries but also is a common thread that runs through every social strata, country, and race.
Make no mistake about it – gambling is not just a game; sometimes gambling can determine history. In the 11th century, for instance, a land dispute between Norway and Sweden was settled by the roll of the dice. Even earlier, gambling games (the predecessor ofKeno, supposedly) were established in China to bring money into the army’s coffers and in the 1700s lotteries were established to bail out newly established British colonies. Later on (and even today), Americans used statewide lotteries to finance educational infrastructure.
Dice – as integral to gambling as a deck of cards – originated in the ancient game of bone rolling. Dice are possibly the oldest form of gambling, predating playing cards by hundreds of years. Originally, a form of fortune telling, bone rolling slowly evolved into a gambling game. The original dice were made of bones and teeth of animals; dice in the shape we know today originate in Korea and were used in a Buddhist game called Promotion.
Cards were also an early form of gambling. The earliest found playing card dates from the 11th century and comes from Chinese Turkestan. But the French are credited for having first introduced the type of playing cards we're familiar with today including the recognizable suits: spades, clubs, diamonds and hearts. Other countries used different kinds of cards. India, for example, had round game tokens, and the Chinese, of course, had dominoes.
First there were cards and then there were card games and by the beginning of the 18th century the French were playing a nascent form of blackjack called, "vingt et un" (twenty-one). Blackjack made its way from France to the United States in the 19th century, and today it is one of the most popular card games around, both in online and land-based casinos.
Not all gambling games are ancient, however, unless you consider the beginning of the 20th century prehistoric times. The first slot machine was invented around the turn of the century by Charles Fey and it changed the way people would gamble. Slot machines are considered the quintessential casino game and in many casinos they take up 80% of the floor space and contribute to profits accordingly.
Casino gambling began in Europe and the Italian word "casino" originally meant a small villa or summerhous, usually built on the grounds of a larger Italian home or palace. During the 19th century, the term casino came to include public buildings where gambling and sports took place. In the U.S., where immigrants brought with them familiar gambling games, houses and halls in which to play became commonplace. During the early 1800s gambling on riverboats became fashionable and beautiful floating casinos graced the waters of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. In big city centers such as New York and Chicago, gambling halls also attracted refined clientele; they were often frequented by members of the upper class who could afford to bet big and lose big. Gambling halls, a.k.a. casinos, became big business.
But all good things come to an end, and the huge gambling industry turned shady and questionable as unscrupulous people worked their way in. As they did, gambling lost its high-class image and went from being considered a legitimate, sophisticated activity to being thought of as immoral, illegal behavior. Gaming laws were changed and by 1915 almost all the country’s once-legal gambling establishments, racetracks, and numbers operations were shut down. Gambling remained illegal throughout the U.S. with one exception - in Nevada where state legislators legalized gambling in order to raise money and generate revenue. This historic act essentially opened the doors to the modern era of casino gambling.
The first Nevada casino was built in Reno but it was Las Vegas that became the gambling center of the country, if not the world. During the 1970s Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada profited from a robust economy, directly related to the gambling industry and at that time Atlantic City’s first casino opened its doors, as well. But the biggest change in casino gambling has been brought about by technology – computers in general and the Internet in particular have changed the face of casino games with the advent of online gambling. Casino games have come a very long way from the days of bone dice and wooden playing cards.