Gambling History

Most archeological evidences say that gambling was known by the first people. The scientists revealed the dice produce of bones which dates back 40,000 years. Moreover, some cave drawings depict people throwing the dice and playing other games. By and large, dice are the oldest playing tools which are used now in popular games.

The game with dice or craps was invented by Chinese back in 2300 B.C. and later got to Greece. It is also known that gambling was banned at those times, despite the fact people continued to roll the dice. The ivory dice dating back around 1500 B.C. were discovered on the territory of Thebes. Craps were very popular with the elite of the Roman Empire in which even children had to learn to gamble throwing the small cubes.

Though, in the 14th century gambling was banned by King Henry VIII who was mad about the fact that the soldiers wasted time gambling.

Native Americans were convinced that gambling games were created by God and that's why they did not consider gambling as misdeed. They made dice of plum stones and painted them in black and white. Americans were among the first to use dice to predict destiny.

First legal lottery occurred in 1793 in Washington. Back then, during the Revolutionary War lotteries became the best way to accomplish the finance improvements and later all the states started to organize lotteries. At the beginning of the 1830's there were about 420 lotteries in the United States.

Card games became also popular in the New World and were mostly played at the riverboats. Some river venues were legal and some of them were illegal. Staring from that time the players always tried to cheat and when the tricksters were caught they were severely punished. However, more and more methods to manipulate playing cards appeared. A great number of playing techniques were invented to influence the card games among which the most popular is blackjack strategy.

According to the basic slots information the first slot machines were based on poker games and today the players also have chance to try video poker at online and ground casinos.

After the Civil War finished all state lotteries were forbidden and the following step was to prohibit other games. Thus since the 1890's all gambling activities were not legal in the United States and most of them had to go underground. Yet, in 1931 Nevada legalized different gambling games and a number of gambling venues emerged again. It was the beginning of the unbelievable development of gambling industry all around the globe. As a result we now can easily play roulette, online slot machines and card games over the Internet. Today more and more game variations appear and more and more people are involved in gambling business, however, the struggle for legalizing gambling in most areas continues.