GAMBLING is the wagering of money or other consideration of value on an uncertain event that is dependent either wholly on chance, as in roulette, or partly on chance and partly on skill, as in certain card games and in sporting contests.

All About the History of Baccarat

Baccarat

(pronounced "bac-car-ah") has long held the attention of gamblers and an early version was played with cards from a Tarot deck back in the Middle Ages.

A more modern variant originated in Italy (Europe) around 1490 and at the present time it is most popular in European casinos. The word baccarat is derived from the Italian word baccara, meaning zero, and refers to the zero value given to all of the face cards and tens.

In the 1500s, it was introduced to French aristocrats looking for a new and exciting game of chance by their Italian counterparts. They called it "Chemin De Fer," the French term for railroad. In the 1900s, when the game became fashionable on the French Riviera (game of choice for the French nobility), players nicknamed it "Chemmy" or "Shimmy." 

Chemin De Fer traveled from Europe to South America and found a new home in Argentina. Casinos in Mar Del Plata (Argentina) became a gambling paradise for wealthy South Americans. When the game reached Cuba, it underwent a rule change that turned it into American Baccarat (in American Baccarat each player bets against the house; in Chemin De Fer, players bet among themselves). In 1958, at Capri Hotel Casino  in Havana (Cuba), a young casino executive named Francis "Tommy" Renzoni, spent countless hours watching gamblers play baccarat.

When Renzoni left Cuba and settled in Nevada, he persuaded the owners of Sands Hotel to open up a baccarat pit. But the game was not an overnight success in the United States. The separated pit and the game’s sophisticated aura intimidated American gamblers, who at this time were mostly craps players who had picked up a liking for the dice during military service in World War II. During that time a special form of Baccarat was introduced in many Las Vegas casinos and the game has become even more popular. In this variation of Baccarat the role of banker is usually held permanently by the House or Casino; only one non-Banker hand is dealt, and bets may be played either with or against the Banker. Its popularity increased steadily in the United States,Australia and England during the past century. Traditionally, the baccarat pit is set aside from the main casino area, away from all of the "common" games, and "common" players. 

In February of 1990, the late Akio Kashiwagi, who at one time was the world’s highest roller, made history books when he won over $6 million at an Atlantic City baccarat table. Playing in Atlantic City’s Trump Plaza casino, and betting $200,000 a hand, Mr. Kashiwagi, also known as "The Warrior," put a significant dent in the Plaza’s bottom line for the month. But like all winners, he came back for more. The following May, after six grueling days of playing, Kashiwagi made the record books for the second time. Losing close to $10 million, the Warrior recorded the largest loss at a baccarat table in casino history. 

Now that the internet is fast evolving into becoming a highly diversified meeting place and playground, it has grown to include Online Baccarat. Gambling has now become firmly rooted in the electronic age, so it was only natural that it should gravitate to the Internet in the form of online baccarat. The number of internet users is increasing steadily each week and more money and resources are being poured into the infrastructure. The resulting increase in bandwidth will provide support for a high degree of interaction between users and online baccarat. As thisbecomes a reality, online baccarat will take a permanent place amongst hundreds of other forms of internet based entertainment.

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Blackjack

was probably spawned from other French games such as "Chemin De Fer" and "French Ferme" and originated in French casinos around 1700 where it was called "Vingt-Et-Un" ("Twenty-One")

Blackjack reached the United States in the 1800's. In the early days of western card rooms, poker and craps were the preferred games of the high rollers. Twenty-One, as it was played at the time had not really caught on. To make the game more exciting some clubs began offering a whopping 10 to 1 payout (1000%) to any player who got a special hand on his first two cards: Ace of Spades + a Jack of Clubs or Jack of Spades (Spades being the color black of course) - thus "21" became "blackjack" because of those two cards.

Gambling was legal and popular all over the Western United States but by 1910 it was outlawed in Nevada and elsewhere. Blackjack and all the other casino games went underground. 

In 1931, Nevada re-legalized casino gambling where blackjack became one of the primary games of chance offered to gamblers.

Roger Baldwin wrote a paper in the Journal of the American Statistical Association titled "The Optimum Strategy in Blackjack". He used calculators, probability and statistics theory to reduce the house advantage. His paper is ten pages long and fairly mathematical.

Professor Edward O. Thorp (sometimes called the Einstein of blackjack) refined Baldwin's basic strategy and developed the first card counting techniques. He published his results in "Beat the Dealer", a book that became so popular that for a week in 1963 it was on the New York Times best seller list. 

This was really the first book that claimed the casino could be beaten at blackjack and showed the player how to do it. It was Thorp who first developed and advocated the 'basic strategy'. 

The casinos were so affected by "Beat the Dealer" that they began to change the rules of the game to make if more difficult for the players to win. People protested by not playing the new BlackJack. The unfavorable rules resulted in a loss of income for the casinos. So they quickly reverted back to the original rules. In the long run the casinos made a bundle from the game's newly gained popularity thanks to Thorp's book and all the media attention it generated. 

Stanford Wong picked up the torch from Thorp and continued to be the guru of modern Blackjack. His book, Professional Blackjack, distills his extensive computer simulation work and is the bible for beginner and expert alike.

Julian Braun, who worked at IBM, invented a new Basic Strategy, and a number of card counting techniques. His conclusions were used in a 2nd edition of Beat the Dealer, and later in Lawrence Revere's 1977 book "Playing Blackjack as a Business".

Ken Uston used five computers that were built into the shoes of members of his playing team in 1977. They won over a hundred thousand dollars in a very short time but one of the computers was confiscated and sent to the FBI. The feds decided that the computer used public information on blackjack playing and was not a cheating device. This story about his blackjack exploits are detailed in his book "The Big Player". 

1978 was the year casino gambling was legalized in Atlantic City, New Jersey and blackjack flourished in the glittering casinos that soon popped up on the Atlantic coast. 

As of 1989, only two states had legalized casino gambling. Since then, about 20 states have had a number of small time casinos sprout up in places such as Black Hawk and Cripple Creek, Colorado and in river boats on the Mississippi. Roughly 70 Native American Indian reservations operate or are building casinos as well. In addition to the United States, countries operating casinos include France, England, Monaco (Monte Carlo of course) and quite a few in the Caribbean islands. 

Today, blackjack in various forms is played in casinos in Canada, Europe, the Caribbean, Australia, all over Asia, and on the internet.

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Craps

. The most fashionable men of 18th and 19th century England rolled dice in a game called Hazard in luxurious private gambling houses. In hazard the banker (setter), sets a stake. The player (caster), calls a main (a number from 5 to 9, inclusive) and then throws two dice. If he "nicks" (5 is nicked by 5; 6 by 6 or 12; 7 by 7 or 11; 8 by 8 or 12; 9 by 9), he wins the stake. The caster throws out, losing the stake, when throwing aces or deuce-ace ("crabs", or "craps") or when throwing 11 or 12 to a main of 5 or 9, 11 to 6 or 8, and 12 to 7. Any other throw is his chance; he keeps throwing until the chance comes up, when he wins, or until the main comes up, when he loses. When a chance is thrown, the setter pays more than the original stake, according to specified odds.  

The French learned the game from the English and called it Craps or French Hazard, a corruption of "Crabs," the name for a pair of ones. In French hazard the player throws against the house. In English or Chicken Hazard the player throws against an opponent.

When settlers arrived in the new world, they brought their dice with them. And, gradually, as dice were rolled on riverboats, wharfs and in private houses, a simplified Americanized version of "Craps" developed: Bernard de Mandeville adapted Craps from the game Hazard in New Orleans in 1813 and simplified hazard into the present game of private craps. So the casino dice game of craps is of American origin. 

Private craps then moved up the Mississippi river on steamboats and spread to casinos and gambling halls throughout the country. This original version of craps allowed only "field" and "come bets", which made the game very vulnerable against fixed dice, which were often used. 

It wasn't until John H. Winn, a dice-maker by trade, created an innovated version of craps, where players could bet for, or against the roller. This eliminated the usefulness of fixed dice and created the very popular versions of craps that are played today.

The popular game moved west with the frontier, and is played today in homes and clubs across the country. By 1910, craps had become the most popular casino game in the world. As many as 30 million Americans play dice every year. And the stakes can be gigantic. Some years ago, a Detroit businessman broke a casino bank when he won $300,000 in less than two hours of play.

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Keno

originated about 200 years B.C. in China out of an ancient poem known as "The Thousand Character Classic ".  Rather than numbers 1 through 80, the first eighty characters of "The Thousand Character Classic" were used in the body of the keno ticket. 

The "Thousand Character Classic" was used in China as the second primer for teaching reading and writing to children. By putting one thousand characters into a more or less coherent rhymed form, learning was presumably made easier and more interesting. It is something of a very great achievement in that no character is repeated. This poem was so well known in China that its one thousand characters, arranged in order, were often used as a fanciful way of notation or counting from one to a thousand.

There are many legendary stories about the origin of the poem. One story relates that the celebrated penman Wang Hi-Che wrote the thousand characters on a thousand separate pieces of paper. The Emperor Liang Wu Ti then directed Chou Hsing-Szu to arrange them in rhymed sentences to convey a meaning. This task was accomplished in a single night, but such was the mental effort that the compilers hair and beard were turned completely white before morning.

The poem is read from top to bottom and from right to left.

While the use of these characters on a Keno ticket is merely to represent numbers, some Chinese people select the character marked for the word meaning. The words selected usually have a special meaning to them, pronounced the same as their name, or an event that has happened to them, or a recent dream

Poker

There is no clear or direct early ancestor of the game. It is likely that poker derived itself from elements of many different games. The consensus is that poker's birth is a very old one.   

Poker may be directly traced back to the old Italian game of Primero and the French game of Gilet (Betting and valued hands were three of a kind, pairs, three of the same suit and flush), which became Brelan during the reign of Charles IX (1550-74). Brelan evolved into Bouillotte, which flourished during the French Revolution.By the 18th century the betting and bluffing aspects of the Game had been introduced in such five-card Games as Brag (England), Pochen (Germany), and Poque (France).  

Most of the dictionaries and game historians say that the word Poker comes from an eighteenth-century French game, poque. However, there are other references to pochspiel, which is a German game. In pochspiel, there is an element of bluffing, where players would indicate whether they wanted to pass or open by rapping on the table and saying, "Ich Poche!" Some say it may even have derived from the Hindu word, pukka.

Sailors from Persia taught the French settlers in New Orleans the gambling card game Âs, which was derived from the ancient Persian game of Âs Nas. The Frenchmen would bet by saying, for example, "I poque for a dollar," and would call by saying, "I poque against you for two dollars." Those were the betting expressions used in their game of Poque, a three-card game first played by commoners in France and then by Frenchmen in America as early as 1790. Poque was similar to Bouillotte, a card game popular with the aristocrats in France just prior to the French Revolution of 1789. 

Combining the words "Âs" and "Poque," the game became known as "Poqas." Then, influenced by the southern accent and the name of the German bluff game of Pochen, the pronunciation of "Poqas" became "Pokah". Under Yankee influence, the pronunciation finally became "Poker".

Another explanation for the word poker, is that it came from a version of an underworld slang word, "poke", a term used by pickpockets. Card sharps who used the 20-card cheating game to relieve a sucker from his poke (money) may have used that word among themselves, adding an r to make it "poker." The thought was that if the sharps used the word "poker" in front of their victims, those wise to the underworld slang would notice the change. There are those who also believe that "poke" probably came from "hocus-pocus", a term widely used by magicians. 

One of the earliest references was found in the diary of an English actor, Joseph Crowell: In 1829 there was a game - attributed to Henry Clay - being played on a steamboat bound for New Orleans in which each player received five cards and made bets - then whoever held the highest combination of cards won all bets. It was probably the earliest form of poker or its immediate predecessor, the Persian game of Âs Nas. Âs Nas requires a special deck of 25 cards with 5 suits (5 cards per suit total). 

Poker moved from New Orleans by steamboat up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. From the river towns, the game spread east by the new railroad and west by covered wagons.

Jonathan H. Green makes one of the earliest written references to poker in 1834. In his writing, Green mentions rules to what he called the "cheating game," which was then being played on Mississippi riverboats. It wasn't until this time that he realized this was the first such publication and that American Hoyle, at this time  did not mention the game, and he called it Poker.

The game he described was played with 20 cards, using only the aces, kings, queens, jacks and tens. Two to four people could play, and each was dealt five cards. By the time Green wrote about it, poker had become the number one cheating game on the Mississippi boats, receiving even more action than Three-Card Monte. Most people taken by Three-Card Monte thought the 20-card poker seemed more a legitimate game, and they came back, time and time again. It would certainly appear, then, that poker was developed by the cardsharps.

The 20-card deck was replaced by the standard 52, and the flush introduced. During the Civil War, modifications such as open cards (stud poker), the draw, and the straight became popular.

Poker was taken back to Europe when Robert C. Schenck, U.S. minister to Great Britain, introduced it to members of the court of Queen Victoria at a royal party in Sommerset. A set of rules written by Schenck was the first book on the Game. 

When the joker was introduced as a wild card in 1875, the European influence of poker ended. Further development of the game was essentially American. (Jackpot Poker is draw poker requiring both an "ante" and "jacks-or-better" to open). The phrase "passing the buck" derives from the practice of using a buckhorn-handled knife to designate the dealer.

Split-pot/low ball (version of poker) introduced in 1903.

Two Missouri assemblymen (Coran and Lyles) introduced a bill to the state legislature in 1909 to control and license poker players in order to prevent "millions of dollars lost annually by incompetent and foolish persons who do not know the value of a poker hand."

In 1911, California's attorney general (Harold Sigel Webb) ruled that closed poker (draw poker) was a game of skill and beyond antigambling laws. But open poker (stud poker) was a game of chance and therefore illegal. That stimulated the development of new draw games and the use of wild cards. The variety of poker games grew steadily, particularly during the First and Second World Wars.

In Britain, gaming laws which originated in the 16th Century are still in operation today and in 1938, the Lord Chief Justice declared poker to be a game of chance, and it was not legalized in clubs until the 1960's.

In the 1960s, poker variations further developed with innovations such as twists (extra draws) and qualifiers (minimum hands to win).

In 1968, Wallace's Advanced Concepts of Poker was first published. By 1972, the publication had become the largest-selling poker book in the world. The Advanced Concepts of Poker fully identified for the first time the potentially ruthless, manipulative, but highly profitable nature of poker. In addition, the characteristics of consistent winners, and chronic losers were identified. Also identified for the first time were three different kinds of odds, the effects of the betting pace versus the betting stakes, the advantages of aggressive betting, and the advantages gained by the good player when complex and fast-paced games were played. And most important, the Advanced Concepts of Poker clearly identified the differences between the financially profitable good poker and financially destructive gambling as well as the differences between winners and losers.

World series of Poker first played at Binions Horseshoe in Las Vegas in 1970. The winner was declared poker world champion.

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Slot Machines

In 1899, Charles Fey of San Francisco devised the "Liberty Bell", the forerunner of modern slot machines. The coin-operated one-armed bandits, as they became known, had a basic design of three spinning wheels marked with symbols. In 1905, the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago stole a machine and copied the design and soon afterward, other companies began producing similar products.

Chewing gum was incorporated into the earliest versions so that they could be classified as vending machines. This gave rise to the fruit symbols on the reels, indicating the flavors of the gum and hence the name "fruit machine". The symbol of a bell on the reels derives from the original Liberty Bell machine.

Slot machines spread rapidly across the USA until the 1950s, when federal legislation restricted their use.

Slot machines were originally introduced as an amusement for the wives and girlfriends of high rolling gamblers, but by the 1990s the slots had surpassed table games in popularity.

Las Vegas has more that 165,000 slot machines of every imaginable type. Their success is due to their simplicity, as no skill is required to play them. New machines are continually being developed - the latest trend incorporating video and computer technology into dynamic interactive games.

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The origins of Bingo

can be traced back to the year 1530 in which a State run lottery game Lo Giuco de Lotto was originated. The game is still held every Saturday in Italy. "Le Lotto" migrated to France in the late 1700s in a form similar to the Bingo we know today, with a playing card, tokens and numbers read aloud.

Throughout the 1800's these lottery type of games spread quickly throughout Europe and many offshoots of the game were created. One popular form of game had a player's card divided into 3 horizontal rows and 9 vertical ones. The first vertical row contained the numbers from 1 to 10, the second from 11 to 20, and so on until 81-90 on the ninth vertical row. The 3 horizontal rows each contained five squares with numbers in them and 4 blank ones. The caller would then draw from a bag of wooden chips numbered from 1 to 90. The object of the game was to be the first to completely cover one of the 3 horizontal rows. The blank squares were considered free squares much like the free square in the Bingo cards of today.

In 1929, a game called "Beano" was played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. The bingo game's tools consisted of dried beans, a rubber number stamp and some cardboard. A New York toy salesman named Edwin Lowe, observed the game where players exclaimed "BEANO!" if they filled a line of numbers on their card. Lowe introduced the game to his friends in New York where one of them mistakenly yelled "BINGO!" in her excitement . "Lowe's Bingo" was soon very popular and Lowe asked competitors to pay him $1 per year to allow them to call their games Bingo as well.

By the 1940's Bingo games had sprung up all over the country with thousands of games being played every week. Today Bingo games can be found just about anywhere.

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The name itself, Roulette

" is a French word meaning "Small Wheel" which signifies that the game, as we know it today, originated somewhere within the French culture.  

Sometimes there are stories heard that the game was created in China and brought to Europe by Dominican monks who were trading with the Chinese.  

There are accounts of ancient Romans tipping their chariot wheels on their sides and spinning one of the wheels for games of diversion.

Earlier versions of Roulette, like the carnival wheel game, were in use throughout Europe, as early as the mid-1500s.

A very primitive version of roulette was introduced in the 17th century by the famous French scientist, Blaise Pascal, who is also accredited with the probability theory. It is said that this was a by-product of his perpetual motion devices. Blaise Pascal's invention of the roulette is sometimes rather seen as a tale. 

The first account we have of a spinning ball and a rotating horizontal wheel being used as a gaming device was in a game called "roly-poly," in 1720. The Gaming Acts of 1739 and 1740 banned roly-poly, as well as many other games of chance, in England. An innovative Beau Nash, the Master of Ceremonies at Bath, England, evaded these laws by introducing "Even-Odd". EO was a simplified version of Roulette, but that too was outlawed in 1745. 

During the next 50 years (from 1745 onwards), the game evolved into the one that we can recognize today. The modern roulette wheel began appearing in Paris casinos around 1796. The familiar elements were already there –  the numbered layout of pockets 1–36 with alternating red and black colors, green 0, and green 00. The 0 was actually red in color and the 00 black, and the rules were the same. Eventually these colors would be changed to green to avoid further confusion on color bets.

Roulette was introduced to the United States of America in the 1800’s, by way of the many Europeans found in the Louisiana city of New Orleans. Due to the greed of certain gaming establishment proprietors, who were not content with a 5.26% edge, people soon stopped playing roulette, particularly those roulette wheels which these enterprising businesspersons had reduced to just 31 pockets in order to benefit a staggering 12.90% advantage. Of course, people ended up only playing the original double zero wheels. The game became popular in the old west of America during the California Gold Rush.

Frenchmen Francois and Louis Blanc (brothers) invented the single "0" roulette game in 1842. Roulette’s history changed dramatically at this point, particularly the House’s edge, which was now reduced from 5.26% to a 2.70%. The game became a smashing success. Because gambling was illegal in France during this time, the game was introduced in Hamburg (Bavaria), Germany where it became very popular and replaced an earlier version that featured higher odds. 

The option of "En Prison" was offered, further lowering the house edge, on even money wagers, down to 1.35%. No wonder the game accounts for over 50% of revenues in European casinos as compared to about 5% in U.S. casinos. Casinos today in Atlantic City, do offer En Prison for even money bets on their double zero wheels. This effectively reduces the casinos' edge from 5.26% to 2.63% for those bets.

When history led the Principality to financial problems toward the end of the 1800s, Prince Charles, ruler of Monaco at the time, decided to bring gambling to Monaco. Although he allowed the gambling venture to proceed, he was not sure how well it would do.
 
When gambling was eventually banned from Germany, Louis Blanc accepted an invitation from the Prince of Monaco, Charles III, to visit Monte Carlo to establish and operate the casino that today sets the casino standards for everyone across Europe. In 1863 Blanc signed a 50-year franchise contract and built the luxurious Monte Carlo casino in a manner to attract the richest members of society and hence brought the game of roulette back to France. Blanc persuaded French authorities to build a highway to Monte Carlo and to extend the railway from Nice, which opened Monte Carlo to the world.
 
Although over time gambling became legalized throughout nearby France, the game of Roulette remained exclusive to Monte Carlo until 1933, which kept not only the luxurious Monte Carlo Casino popular, but also the game of Roulette.

Roulette did enjoy popularity stateside around the turn of the century up until World War II. As Americans learned to lose less at craps and subsequently became interested in the notion that black jack was beatable, roulette declined in popularity. Roulette is the oldest casino game still in existence.

Although both the American (double zero) and the European (single zero) versions of the wheel were invented in France, the double zero wheel has come to be known as the American Wheel, since, contrary to its fate in Europe, it has survived in the United States.

The single zero version has maintained itself as the European favorite, and has come to be known as the French Wheel. Other European nations have adopted the single zero version as their own. For example, there is the “British Single” Roulette.