ONLINE GAMBLING HISTORY

CASINO GAMES

Gambling is common term for various games. Different forms of gambling have their own very distinct history but eventually find their way into each other. Gambling always was and will be an important part of history and prevailing form of entertainment for rich and poor alike. Gambling has continued to gain in popularity through out time only to reach its pinnacle in the form of online gambling.

Sometimes gambling played a major role in history. For instance, in 1020 A.D. King Olaf of Norway and King Olaf of Sweden met to decide on the ownership of an isolated district of Hising. As they could not resolve the dispute by other means they have chosen to roll two dice. At first rolls both Kings rolled double six, at the second roll however the Swedish king rolled two dice of six and the Norway king rolled six on one die while another one cracked and showed seven!

In 1700s lotteries were established to bail out newly established British colonies. Later on, Americans used state-wide lotteries to sponsor the founding of national educational infrastructure.

History of playing cards The origin of playing cards is not exactly known. While earliest verifiable referrences to playing cards in Europe can be traced back to 13th century, no one is certain where exactly do they originate and how did they manage to make their way into our world. Earliest found playing card is dated 11th century and comes from Chinese Turkestan. Many scholars suggest that it must have been the Chinese who invented the original playing cards as they were the ones who also invented the paper. We know that the four decked cards evolved in islamic world even before the 13th century and were brought to the civilized world by europeans. It is the French who first introduced the design of the cards we're familiar with today together with spades, clubs, diamonds and hearts. The design of the cards was efficient enough to enable manufacturing en masse. It took the cards nearly four centuries to finally become popular as England reluctantly picked up the card designs from the French and started producing them itself. Later on, Americans started producing their own cards adding a lot to the decks and making them as we know them today: double headed court cards, varnished backs, indexes, round corners and the infamous Joker.

Soon after the Americans caught up artists found themselves a new and interesting game field and thus more card brands were born giving rise to an entire market of playing cards.

Other countries used absolutely different playing cards. For example, India had circular game tokens. Japanese and chinese also have their own versions of playing cards and their gaming concepts are based on their distinct culture and differ greatly from what we are used to.

History of Blackjack The history of the game of Blackjack began around the beginning of the 18th century in France, where it appeared in the form of a game called "vingt et un" or "twenty one". The name "Blackjack" comes from an early version of the game in which the player received a payoff of 10 to 1 if he had a black jack of spades and a (black) ace of spades.

Blackjack made its way from France to the United States in the 19th century, where it was mainly found out in the American West. In 1931, gambling became legal in Las Vegas, and Blackjack became one of the staples of the new casino scene. In the 1950's and 1960's, books were published that used mathematical analysis to teach players how to improve their odds of beating the dealer. One of these books, Dr. Edward Thorp's "Beat the Dealer" became a bestseller, and Blackjack became the most popular casino game in the United States.

In 1970's, Ken Uston and his merry band of creative gamblers used hidden computers to win hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their ingenuity attracted the attention of the FBI, which examined the computers and decided that they were not cheating devices, and therefore were fair and legal. Players rushed to apply the lessons of Uston's method, but many casinos decided to adopt a multi-deck system of play, which complicated methods to improve the player's chances. Uston himself was banned from several Las Vegas casinos and was eventually found dead in a Paris apartment in 1987. But the game lives on, and prospers in almost every self-respecting casino, traditional or online.

History of dice The dice as we know them today find their origin in ancient games of bone rolling. Despite of what some say, dice have traceable history that goes back into the very roots of ancient humanity. They are arguably he oldest form of gambling known to humanity. Dice games were witnessed by Marco Polo. Chingis Khan, ancient egyptian rulers, ancient greeks all were known to resort to dice rolling as means of divination and entertainment. Originally a form of divination, bone rolling slowly became a game of fortune telling and gambling. American Indians, Aztec and Maya, the africans and the Eskimo all have their own dice games.

The original dice were bones and teeth of animals, stones and sticks of wood that primitive culture of witches and shamans could use as "magical" means of divination and foretelling. The dice in the shape we know today apparently come from Koreans used in a buddhist game called "Promotion".

Along with the evolution of dice also came the art of cheating in die games. Romans were especially notorious at cheating; Augustus, Nero and Caligula all happened to be prolific dice cheaters.

By tenth century dicing was extremely popular almost everywhere. Dicing was in fact so popular that the Crusader army leaders had to prohibit dice gambling among the lower ranks of troops entirely so as to prevent the soldiers from gambling out their possessions entirely.

History of slot machines In the beginning of the twentieth century several innovations burst onto the scene that would change the face of cultural and leisure activities. Two originated in the American south - the blues and jazz - and one on the West coast - the slot machine. Like the first two, which quickly were adopted throughout the world and became staples of world culture, slot machines also began to appear very quickly all over the world.

The first slot machine was invented by Charles Fey in San Francisco around the turn of the century. On it were pictures of the different suits used on playing cards - hearts, spades and diamonds. Around 1910 the machine went into mass production, and the pictures on its revolving surfaces changed from being playing card suits to the now familiar fruits. These old fashioned slot machines were made out of cast iron and wood. During the sixties, the slot machine became electronic, and in the 1970's the first video slot machines were introduced. Video slots did not have the mechanical insides of the earlier machines, rather they had screens on which the wheels would turn.

Today, the most popular slot machines are virtual. The internet contains a wide variety of exciting and unusual on-line Casino slot machines whose function accurately simulates that of the familiar slot machines found in every casino around the world. Though lacking in physical form, today's online Casino slot machines offer the player the same odds and excitement found in a casino, only these slots can be played anytime and on any computer.

Source: worlds-best-online-casinos.com

SPORTS BETTING Part 1

Ever since there have been sports in America, there has been sports betting. The founders of the United States were risk-takers by nature, hence the obvious attraction to gambling in all forms. Back then, people bet on makeshift horse races, cockfights and bare-knuckle brawls. Colonists from England had gambling in their blood since their fathers and grandfathers had been doing it for generations - not only in hopes of a profit but also as a form on leisure and entertainment. If there was a sport to be played, there was somebody somewhere who was willing to bet on it. Sports betting, it seems, was a natural part of the culture of the early Americans.

Today, sports betting is more popular then ever before. Last year, Nevada took in almost $2 billion in sports betting via more than 150 sports books in the state. That is just a small percentage, however, of the money bet worldwide. An ESPN The Magazine article published in 2003 estimated that the online sports betting industry takes in $63 billion a year. It has also been estimated that one in every four Americans bets on a sporting event at least once a year and that 15 percent of the U.S. population indulges in sports betting regularly.

There are many factors that have played a part in this growth and there have been many colorful characters that have made their contributions to the sports betting industry over the years. One thing is for certain: sports betting is here to stay. And it will likely continue to expand exponentially in the future, despite the federal government's attempts to limit its growth. The possibilities, most agree, are endless. "Sports gambling used to be a real small segment of the gambling public," says Bob Scucci, race and sports book director for the Stardust Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. "The industry has elevated above that now. It goes through the entire middle class family to the professional [bettor] to the guy off the street. It just permeates through every facet of society."

The Beginning In regards to sports betting, horse racing saw the most widespread popularity throughout the 19th Century and into the early 20th Century. In its initial stages racing was a sport that was enjoyed and wagered on by mostly the upper class. But after the Civil War horse tracks began to dot the eastern landscape and bettors from all economic sectors flocked to the tracks in droves.

Many enterprising bookmakers would start 'auction pools' in the early days of horse racing which involved auctioning off bets for each horse in a race. But this format was short lived because bettors were out of luck if the horse that they wanted to wager on was already taken. The bookies - always considered an innovative bunch when contrasted with professionals from any other industry -- soon realized that setting odds on individual horses would increase betting handle and, in turn, the bookie's hold. When there was overwhelming money on one horse, the bookmaker would simply lower the odds to increase the attractiveness of other horses in the race. This format is still in use today although horse betting has steadily decreased in popularity since the 1930s.

By the 1920s racing had reached its peak and there were more than 300 racetracks in the U.S. in addition to thousand of 'pool halls,' or off-track betting facilities, which were connected to the tracks by telegraph wires. Here locals could place their bets on horses at a multitude of racing venues around the country. Horse racing remained the most popular form of betting until professional sports leagues began forming and capturing the attention of the nation's gamblers. In the late 1800s, professional baseball began to gain popularity and, consequently, so did betting on the sport. Baseball 'pool cards' became a standard in urban areas in the East. These cards, similar to present-day parlay cards, offered bettors a plethora of baseball betting options that they could wager on for amounts as little as 10 cents. But there was a catch with these pool cards: the odds were badly skewed in the houses' favor. There was no way for a bettor, no matter how sharp they might have been, to make a profit over an extended period of time. No one seemed to care, however, as the cards continued to increase in popularity while the bookies' pockets continued to get fatter.

A fixing ignominy in the 1919 World Series - dubbed the 'Black Sox Scandal' by the media -- exposed the risk of professional baseball to be compromised by gamblers. Some players from the favored Chicago White Sox were found to have fixed games at the request of gamblers (Chicago lost the series to Cincinnati, 5-3). The scandal rocked the nation and the general public was given a negative impression of sports bettors, who were made out to look like criminals who were trying to ruin the sanctity of the game for their own monetary advancement. While gambling was illegal, most considered sports betting to be a victimless crime before the scandal broke.

Baseball, however, pushed ahead despite the black eye and the bettors didn't waver in their zeal to have action on the games. If baseball lost anything because of the moral consequences of the Black Sox Scandal and other cases involving fixed baseball games, it wasn't reflected in the nationwide betting handle, which continued to grow progressively.

Even more people became interested in sports betting during the 'Golden Era' of sports in the 1920s. College football and college basketball were gaining huge popularity with bettors, as was boxing, and baseball was as well liked as ever. Pool cards were the favorite option of many bettors because of their promise of riches during the tough economic times of the Great Depression. Football pool cards proved to be as popular as the baseball cards even though bettors faced the challenge of picking a winning combination of usually five or more games in hopes of a big payday. Just like the baseball cards, the odds for football cards were heavily in the bookie's favor.

"It was a stickup -- an absolute robbery, but you didn't know any better," says former Mirage Race & Sports Book Director Jimmy Vaccaro of the pool cards, which were referred to as 'spot sheets' in his native Pittsburgh. "The odds for a ten-team [parlay] were 100-1 and ties lost on every card. Now you can get 800-1 or 1000-1 [for a ten-team parlay]. You played for the danger of it. You played for a huge payoff if you would ever get lucky."