Casino Gambling History
Craps game is the oldest casino game that was developed initially as the method to predict future. Gambling card games appeared later but they are also considered to be very old. It is believed that gambling was known since the beginning of mankind. Three ancient gods Hades, Poseidon and Zeus had to throw the dice to divide the Universe into three different parts: hell, sea and heaven.
All archeological evidences state that gambling was known by the first people. The researchers discovered the dice made of bones which dates back about 40,000 years. Moreover, some cave drawings represent men throwing the dice and playing other gambling games. In general, dice are thought to be the oldest playing tools that are used these days in common casino games at land and online casinos.
The actual game of dice was invented by Chinese in 2300 B.C. and then was brought to Greece. It is known that gambling was banned at those times, though people continued to roll the dice. The ivory playing cubes dating back around 1500 B.C. were revealed in the area of Thebes. Dice were quite popular in the Roman Empire in which even children had to learn to play throwing the small cubes.
Nonetheless, in the 14th century gambling was prohibited by King Henry VIII who got to know that the soldiers wasted most of the time playing.
Native Americans believed that gambling games were created by God that is why they did not consider gambling as misdeed. They produced dice of plum stones and painted them in black and white. Native Americans were among the first to use dice to predict destiny.
First state lottery was organized in 1793 in Washington. Back then, during the Revolutionary War the state lotteries were the perfect method to accomplish the finance improvements and later all the US states started to provide lotteries. At the beginning of the 1830's there existed nearly 420 state lotteries in North America.
Card games became popular in the New World and were often played at the Mississippi riverboats. Some river venues were legal and some of them were not. Since those times the players always managed to cheat and when the tricksters were spotted they were severely punished. However, more and more techniques and ways to manipulate playing cards appeared.
After the Civil War all state lotteries were banned and the next step was to prohibit all games. Thus starting from the 1890's all gambling activities were not allowed in the United States and most of them went underground. But, in 1931 the state of Nevada legalized different forms of gambling and a number of new gambling venues emerged. It was the start of the rapid development of gambling business all around the world that modified the regular games into online blackjack game, download roulette and slots. The new stimulus for gambling development was the introduction of the Internet that somehow changed the concept of land gambling.