Slot machine

A slot machine is a casino gambling mechanism with three or more reels which spin when a button is pushed. They are called also fruit machine (British English), the slots (Canadian English), poker machine or "pokies" (Australian English and New Zealand English).

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Slot machines are also known as one-armed bandits. This was because they were originally operated by an arm or lever on the side of the machine and such were the player's losses they often left them feeling like they'd been robbed.

The first slot machine was invented by Bavarian immigrant Charles Fey of San Francisco (September 9, 1862 – November 10, 1944)  in 1894. Fey built the 4-11-44 in his basement the following year; it proved so successful at a local saloon that he soon quit his job and opened a factory to produce more units.

In 1898 Fey built the Card Bell, the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine. The Card Bell had a handle that set the reels in motion when it was pushed down and playing card suitmarks that lined up to form poker hands.

Fey's next slot machine was the Liberty Bell, which he introduced in 1899. The machine used horseshoes and bells as well as playing cards on the reels and three bells lined up in a row meant the top payout of fifty cents.

1899 "Liberty Bell" machine, manufactured by Charles Fey. By Nazox 

The Liberty Bell proved immensely popular among saloon patrons in San Francisco. However, because gambling was illegal in California, Fey could not patent his device, leading to his slot machine being quickly copied by Fey’s competitors, such as the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago.

By 1908, lots of Liberty Bell machines were being installed in American bowling alleys, brothels, barber shops and cigar stores as well as saloons,

By the end of the 1900s, fruit symbols were being added to one armed bandits in America, due to the fact that many states had began enacting laws against gambling machines that pay out money. The machines were adapted by using cherries, oranges, pears etc to become "fruit machines".

Bally developed in 1963 Money Honey, the first fully electromechanical slot machine. The electromechanical approach of the 1960s allowed Money Honey to be the first slot machine with a bottomless hopper and automatic payout of up to 500 coins without the help of an attendant. Its popularity led to the increasing predominance of electronic machines, and the side lever soon became a relic of the past.

Slot machines are the most popular gambling method in casinos and constitute about 70 percent of the average US casino's income.

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There is one slot machine in Las Vegas for every eight inhabitants.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

Playing card

HISTORY

Playing cards were invented in Imperial China, during the Tang Dynasty (618–907).

The first reference to card games dates from 868, when the Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang, written by Tang dynasty writer Su E, described Princess Tongchang, daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang, playing the "leaf game" with members of the Wei clan, the family of the princess's husband.

Playing cards took off in China during the Song dynasty (960–1279), where card gambling, suits, and trick-taking games quickly gained popularity.

 Chinese printed playing card dated c. 1400 AD, Ming Dynasty, found near Turpan

Baccarat, a casino card game, is derived from popular 15th-c games, and is thought to have been introduced into France from Italy during the reign of Charles VII.

Trumps as playing cards of a suit that outranks other suits, as in bridge or whist, date back to a 16th-century card game called trumps.

Many governments used to raise revenue by imposing a stamp duty on playing cards. The tax on a deck of playing cards in 16th-century England was 2s 6d - much more than most people earned in a month.

As the Ace card has the most blank space,  the Ace of Spades was usually chosen as the place to bear the stamp which proved the tax was paid. To avoid paying the tax, people would purchase 51 cards instead. Yet, since most games require 52 cards, these people were thought to be stupid or dumb because they weren't "playing with a full deck."

During the Vietnam War, several companies requested packs of playing cards that contained nothing but the Ace of Spades, because they used them in psychological warfare. They believed enemy troops saw it as a symbol of death, and scattered them in the jungle. Thousands of packs were sent.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition, the US military developed a set of playing cards with the names and faces of the most wanted members of Saddam Hussein's government on them. This was so the troops would learn to recognize them while playing cards.

MEANING OF CARDS

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades – King David, Clubs – Alexander the Great, Hearts – Charlemagne, and Diamonds – Julius Caesar.

The ace of spades in a deck of playing cards is ornate because King James I required the card to bear an insignia of the printing house.

The nine of diamonds playing card is commonly known as the ‘Curse of Scotland’. It’s said to be because it’s similar to the coat of arms of the Earl of Stair — who was behind the Massacre at Glencoe in 1692, where 38 people from the MacDonald clan were slaughtered by troops they’d hosted.

The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache on a standard playing card.

The Jack in a deck of cards originally was called a knave in England, which was member of the royal household with no specific job. This later became Jack, as in Jack-of-all-trades, which was a non-specific reference to any generic man.

NUMBERS

There are 52 cards in a pack — the same number as the total letters in "ace, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king."

There are 2,598,960 five-card hands possible in a 52-card deck of cards.

There are 635,013,559,599 possible hands in a game of bridge.

A deck of cards has a relationship with a calendar year. The sum of all cards is 364, plus one joker for 365 and an extra joker for leap years, four suits for the seasons, 52 cards for the weeks in a year, and two colors to represent night and day.

There are more ways to shuffle a deck of cards than there are atoms in the universe. The number of atoms in the universe is 133 followed by 48 zeroes, while the number of ways you can shuffle a deck of cards is 80 followed by 66 zeroes.

FUN FACTS

That use of the word trump is described by the OED as a “corruption of ‘triumph.”

The plot of the 2006 film Casino Royal centers on a game of poker but in the original Ian Fleming book of Casino Royal the card game was baccarat.

In 2010, a casino in Nevada was fined $250,000 for allowing a baccarat player to dance on a card table while the game was being played.

Alabama is the only state in America which imposes a tax on playing cards.

The world record for the farthest playing card thrown is held by Rick Smith Jr., who threw a card 65.96 meters (216 feet, 4 inches) on December 2, 2002 at the Cleveland State Convocation Center in Cleveland.  This is also the fastest recorded throw of a playing card ; it was clocked at 148 kilometers per hour (91.96 miles per hour).

On March 10, 2010  U.S. architect Bryan Berg set a record for the largest-ever house of cards, when he completed a model of the Venetian hotel-casino in Macao built in the resort. Measuring 10.39 m (34 ft 1.05 in) long, 2.88 m (9 ft 5.39 in) tall and 3.54 m (11 ft 7.37 in) wide, Berg used more than 218,000 playing cards and took 44 days to complete the playing card structure.

Bryan Berg at work

Sources Daily Express, Ppcorn

Lottery

The earliest records of a lottery offering tickets for sale was one organized by Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar. The funds were for repairs in the City of Rome, and the winners were given prizes in the form of articles of unequal value.

The first Italian lottery whose actual date was recorded was held on January 9, 1449 in Milan organized by the Golden Ambrosian Republic to finance the war against the Republic of Venice.

The first public lottery to have paid money as prizes is believed to be La Lotto de Firenze in Florence in 1530. This was such a successful enterprise that the practice quickly spread to other Italian cities.

The first British lottery took place near St Paul's Cathedral in London on January 11, 1569. It was organised under Queen Elizabeth I, to raise money to repair the country's harbors and the prizes were plates, tapestry and money. Despite the lottery being promoted by scrolls posted throughout the country showing sketches of the prizes it was a flop. So constables and justices were dispatched to "persuade" minor criminals and vagabonds to buy a ticket.

English Lottery 1566 Scroll. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia Commons

The Dutch used lotteries to raise money for New York's poor as early as 1655.

State lotteries were popular in France during Louis XIV's seventeenth century reign. This was until Louis and his court began to win prizes. The french king had to return his winnings.

The original thirteen colonies of the United States were financed with the help of lottery dollars. It has been recorded that more than 200 lotteries were sanctioned between 1744 and 1776, and played a major role in financing bridges, canals, churches, colleges, libraries, roads, etc.

At the outset of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress used lotteries to raise money to support the Colonial Army. Taxes had never been accepted as a way to raise public funding for projects, and this led to the popular belief that lotteries were a form of hidden tax.

1776 Lottery ticket issued by Continental Congress to finance American Revolutionary War. By Ronshelley (talk)Ron Shelley. Original uploader was Ronshelley at en.wikipedia. 

Every receipt at every store in Taiwan is a ticket for a government lottery with top prizes worth over $300,000. It was introduced in 1951 to combat sales tax dodging by businesses.

Lottery winners in Australia can choose to remain anonymous after an 8-yr-old child was kidnapped for ransom then murdered after the father won a lottery in 1960.

New Hampshire adopted the first legal lottery in 20th century United States in 1964.

In 1984, police detective Robert Cunningham, a regular for eight years at Sal’s Pizzeria in Yonkers, New York, asked his waitress for help choosing his lottery numbers. He won  $6 million dollars, came back, and tipped her $3 million.

When he was 7, Real Madrid and Spain goalkeeper Iker Casillas was given money by his father to validate his lottery ticket but he spent the money on himself. The lottery ticket entered had 14 rights numbers out of 14 and he lost his dad 1.1 million euros.

In 1992, a man named Stefan Mandel won a $27,036,142 jackpot, six second prizes, 132 third prizes, and 135 minor prizes in one lottery, by buying every single combination possible - Over 5.5 million tickets. All 44 US states with lotteries have since changed their laws to prevent this.

In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw was held on November 19, 1994. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.

The first numbers drawn were 30, 3, 5, 44, 14 and 22, the bonus was 10, and seven jackpot winners shared a prize of £5,874,778.

2 of the old Lottery Ticket stands in a supermarket. By Chris Downer, Wikipedia

Denise Rossi won $1.3 million in the California Lottery on December 28, 1996 and filed for divorce 11 days later. She didn’t tell her husband, Thomas, and two years later he found out all about his ex's huge win and sued her. The judge awarded Thomas all of Denise's winnings.

The largest single-ticket jackpot winner in history whose name is known was Jack Whittaker Jnr. of West Virginia. In December 2002 he had the sole winning ticket for a $314.9 million jackpot in the U.S. Powerball lottery.

On October 12, 2010, the numbers that rolled out on Israel's weekly state lottery were 36, 33, 32, 26, 14, 13, and the additional 'strong' number 2. They were exactly the same numbers as were drawn three weeks earlier – an event statisticians said was a one in four trillion chance.

On December 24, 2010, a syndicate, which included psychic Ocean Kinge of Aldershot, England and 14 colleagues, won £1 million in the EuroMillions Millionaire Raffle. Kinge claimed to have predicted the win several months prior. Each syndicate member received £66,666.66.

Early in 2012, almost the entire village of Sodeto, Spain won the largest prize to date in the Spanish Christmas Lottery drawing, a sum of about $950 million. Every resident had purchased at least one ticket, except for one man, who was accidentally overlooked by the ticket salespeople.

A single ticket has claimed a record $2.04 billion jackpot in Powerball's biggest drawing ever.

The ticket was sold at Joe's Service Center in Altadena, California, in Los Angeles County, according to the California Lottery.

Powerball set a record for the largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history and largest cash value for a single ticket with its November 7, 2022 draw. The US$2.04  billion jackpot was won by a ticket sold at Joe's Service Center in Altadena, California,

Oregon local Joemel Panisa was cleaning his room when he found a lotto ticket from January 15, 2016—it was worth $1 million and was about to expire in eight days.

Whenever the Australian actor High Jackman is filming, he buys lottery tickets for the entire crew every Friday. It's a tradition he started in an effort to get to know one another and encourage comradely and team work among the crew.

In Taiwan, every receipt for every store in the country is also a ticket to a government-run lottery with top prizes worth up to US$300,000

Up to 80% of US lottery winners file for bankruptcy within five years.

Gambling

GAMBLING IN HISTORY

England's King Henry VIII lost £3,250 gambling in just two years – that's the equivalent of £1.5 million today.

The first legislation to prohibit gambling was enacted by The Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. It outlawed the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables. This law was part of a larger effort by the Puritan leaders of the colony to promote virtue and curb vice among the colonists.

The Puritans viewed gambling as a sinful and immoral activity that led to idleness and the squandering of resources. They also believed that gambling was a form of fraud and deceit that preyed on the weaknesses of others. As a result, they sought to stamp it out entirely within their colony.

The law was enforced through fines and other penalties, and it remained in effect for many years. However, it was not always strictly enforced, and gambling continued to be a popular pastime among some colonists. Nevertheless, the law reflected the Puritan values and beliefs that shaped the early history of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In eighteenth-century English gambling dens, there was an employee whose only job was to swallow the dice if there was a police raid.

John Montagu, The Fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718 – 1792), was a notorious gambler, often going from pub to pub in London on gambling marathons. To satisfy his hunger, while continuing to gamble, he ordered roast beef between pieces of bread for a snack while he was at the gaming tables; it allowed him to keep one hand free to play while he ate. This became known as the “sandwich”.

As bowling's popularity grew in the early 19th century, betting on the sport arose. Disapproval of gambling led to a ban on ninepins by Connecticut and New York. A tenth pin was added to the game in 1842 - probably as a ruse to avoid the ban.

In 1864 Fyodor Dostoyevsky sold all the rights of present and future writings to his publisher, Stellovsky and set off for Wiesbaden with his "can't lose" system for winning at roulette. He lost everything.

The first slot machine was built in 1899, by Charles Fey. He was a car mechanic who wanted to entertain his customers with something interesting while they waited for work to be completed.

The Apache Chieftain, Geronimo (1827-1909), became a member of the Dutch Reformed Church in his later years. Eventually the Church expelled him for gambling.

On September 1, 1960, the British government gave the go-ahead for betting shops to open and slot machines to be installed in pubs in the UK. The following year, bookmakers were opening at a rate of 100 a week and there were 1,000 casinos within the first five years.

FUN GAMBLING FACTS

Casino revenues in Macau, the semi-autonomous administrative region of China, surpassed those of Vegas years ago. Gambling turnover in Macau is now five times that of Vegas annually, according to The New Yorker.

Pachinko is a type of mechanical game originating in Japan used as a gambling device. In 1999, sales and revenue from pachinko parlors contributed 5.6% of Japan's ¥500 trillion GDP . As of 2015, Japan's pachinko market generated more gambling revenue than that of Las Vegas, Macau and Singapore combined.

A pachinko parlor in Tokyo. By Tischbeinahe - Wikipedia

South Korea has what is known as the ‘Cinderella Law’ which bans youngster under 16 from online gaming between midnight and 6 am.

All gambling in Finland is controlled by the government, and all of the profits go to charity.

Compulsive gambling affects about 5 million U.S. residents.

6 out of 10 Americans believe that gambling is “morally acceptable” behaviour.

Australians are the heaviest gamblers in the world - an estimated 82% of Australians bet.

Sources Daily Mail, Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Dice

The historian Herodotus credits the Lydians with the invention of dice. During a famine, he asserts, they had supplied their people with dice. As they had not enough food to eat daily, men and women were given dice to throw every other day. In the excitement of gambling, they forgot about their hunger.

Gamblers in ancient Greece made dice from the ankle-bones and shoulder blades of sheep.

Antique vases show pictures of fighters in the Trojan war bent over gaming boards, eagerly watching the fall of dice.

 The oldest D20 dice was uncovered in Egypt. It is made of serpentine and dates back around 30 BC

The imperial palace of the Roman emperors often had a dicing room.

Paintings on ancient Roman tombs depicted the dead enjoying the game, which suggests that dice-throwing was considered worthwhile even in after-life.

German tribes adopted dice from the Romans, Tacitus records they became so addicted to the game that, they were sometimes prepared to lose even their freedom for the sake of continuing a game. They would then sell themselves into slavery to the Romans.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables on March 22, 1630.

In eighteenth-century English gambling dens, there was an employee whose only job was to swallow the dice if there was a police raid.

The phrase High jinks, meaning boisterous fun, derives from the pastime in which dice were thrown and those upon whom the lot fell had to assume some fictitious person or repeat verses, incurring forfeits if they failed.

Since dice aren't allowed in U.S. prisons, inmates who play Dungeons & Dragons use a set of 20 playing cards to make "rolls."

There are 42 dots on a pair of dice.

The dots on a dice are deliberately arranged so that spots on opposite sides always add up to seven.

The dots on dice are called 'pips'.

Source Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999. Published by Webster Publishing, 1998.

Casino

The first legal casino opened in Baden-Baden Germany in 1765.

Craps, a casino game of American origin, was adapted from the English dice game Hazard by Bernard de Marigny in New Orleans in 1813.

American gangster Bugsy Siegel opened The Flamingo Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas on December 26, 1946. It is the oldest casino still in operation on the Las Vegas Strip. 

The Flamingo has undergone several ownership changes and renovations throughout its long history, but its legacy as a pioneering venture in Las Vegas remains. It boasts an Art Deco exterior, lush gardens with flamingos (of course!), and a rich history that includes hosting notable entertainers like Bob Hope and Dean Martin.

Insomniac billionaire Howard Hughes once bought a casino for the sole purpose of moving its trademark neon silver slipper. Visible from Hughes' bedroom, it had apparently kept him awake at night.

Britain’s first legal casino of modern times opened at the Metropole in Brighton in 1962.

The Montreux Casino in Switzerland was set ablaze by someone wielding a flare gun during a Frank Zappa concert on December 4, 1971; Deep Purple was in the audience for the show and the incident inspired their song "Smoke on the Water".

The first legal casino outside of Nevada was opened in Atlantic City on May 26, 1978. Resorts Casino Hotel opened its doors at 10:00am, however initial gaming laws in New Jersey only allowed casinos to operate for 18 hours during the week and 20 hours during the weekends.

In 2010, a casino in Nevada was fined $250,000 for allowing a baccarat player to dance on a card table while the game was being played.

The citizens of Monaco are forbidden from entering the gaming rooms of the Monte Carlo Casino. The casino is for foreigners only.

According to Gaming Law, casinos have to stock enough cash to cover all the chips on the 'floor'.

There are no clocks or windows in any casino.

Many casinos try to avoid making you ever have to turn in a right angle by design, as such a hard turn forces people to call upon the decision-making parts of their brain; something that casinos naturally want to avoid.

The Stratosphere Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas is 1149 feet tall, making it the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.

Casino operator Caesars World began as a hot dog stand in Miami Beach.

Despite it being common practice for casinos to ban card counters, a 1979 New Jersey Supreme Court decision banned all Atlantic City casinos from doing so, making them the only state in the USA where a casino is forbidden from throwing out skilled blackjack players.

If the croupier points to his ear in a casino at the gaming table you know someone is on a winning streak. It's a signal for help from other casino staff.

Betting

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was a mathematician who is chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She is often regarded as the first computer programmer. Lovelace tried to raise funds by devising a fool-proof system of betting on the horses. However, she once lost £3,200 betting on the wrong horse at the Epsom Derby.

President Calvin Coolidge, was so famous for saying so little that a White House dinner guest made a bet that she could get him to say more than two words. She told the president of her wager. His reply: "You lose."

Parimutuel betting is a betting system in which all bets of a particular type are placed together in a pool. The designation pari-mutuel is a French phrase translatable as "betting among ourselves." The system, which was developed in France during the 1860s, is used in gambling on horse racing, greyhound racing, jai alai, and other sporting events of relatively short duration in which participants finish in a ranked order.

Betting on the Favorite, an 1870 engraving

While drinking at his London club, Squire Fuller bet a friend that he could see seven church spires from his country house. On his return home, however, he realized there were only six. Undaunted, he had a seventh spire built on a nearby hill.

Mark Twain: "There are two times in a man's life when he shouldn't bet. When he can't afford it and when he can."

The phrase to bet one bottom's dollar on means to be absolutely sure. The reference is to the pile of dollar coins on a US poker table which the confident player will push to the center, including the dollar at the bottom of the pile.