Trivial Pursuits: Little-Known Gambling Facts
Gambling is a lot of fun. But if one is strapped for cash and thus unable to spend for traveling to a casino to gamble, what else can dyed-in-the-wool gamblers do to amuse themselves? How about broadening their knowledge of gambling trivia?
When gathering up a collection of obscure gambling facts, one can't get any more obscure than trivia from the very dawn of civilization itself. How old is gambling? So old, that archaeologists have been digging up dice made from bones and sheep knuckles which have been dated as being several thousands of years old! They have also found ancient dice made from other materials such as stone, bronze, ivory, wood, jewels, and even teeth!
The familiar four suits that make up a deck of playing cards originally symbolized four of the most renowned and influential ancient civilizations in history. The Spades signified the Biblical Middle East, the Clubs stood for ancient Greece, the Roman Empire was represented by the Diamonds, and the Holy Roman Empire was symbolized by the Hearts. The King cards fittingly represented the actual rulers of each of the civilizations that the suits corresponded to. The King of Spades was meant to be King David, the King of Clubs was Alexander the Great, the King of Diamonds was supposed to be Julius Caesar, and Charlemagne was crowned the King of Hearts.
Speaking of cards, let's move on to Blackjack. Originally known as "21," the game got its more familiar name back in the 1900's, from how the illegal casinos of the time would pay bonuses if a two-card 21 consisted of an Ace of Spades and a Jack that could either be a Spade or a Club (in other words, a black Jack). Other names for blackjack or 21 have included the game's prototype vingt-un ("21" in French), Van John and Pontoon.
Moving on to another type of casino game, the predecessor of the French-born Roulette was the English game Roly-Poly, which was played from 1720 until it was prohibited in 1745. The rules of the game were pretty much the same as those of roulette, but instead of numbers, the roly-poly wheel had alternating black and white slots, with "bar black" and "bar white" slots standing in for the roulette wheel's zero and double-zero slots.
And in the early days of the Slot Machine's development, the payoffs originally did not come from the machine itself. Slots players had to go to the operator in order to collect their winnings. One of the earliest types of slot machines was the Poker-based slot, which was eventually phased-out shortly after the first three-reel slot, the Liberty Bell, came to prominence in 1899. However, the Poker-based slot would form the basis for Video Poker, which first appeared in the 1970's.
And so, thus armed with a broad knowledge of gambling trivia, the odds one has of winning their favorite gambling game will… Pretty much remain the same, actually. But one may perhaps be able to wow people with how much useless gambling information they know, and there can be a lot of fun to be had in trading trivia with other gambling fans. And it wouldn't cost a lot of money, either.