Long before the first digital card was dealt or the first Random Number Generator was coded, people in ancient societies were already considering how they could benefit from light-hearted entertainment. From ancient emperors betting on the outcome of bird races to modern gamers navigating the VR lobbies, there have always been gambling stories that are hard to believe.
The Grande Vegas online casino invites you to explore some of the oddities of gambling trivia. From Roman soldiers tossing sheep knuckles during sieges and the real reason that casino cruises were created to online casino with free play, gambling trivia offers some surprising insights into our gaming habits.
Prisons
When you mention "Nevada" and "casino" in the same sentence, most people envision the Vegas Strip. Perhaps, also, the casinos of Downtown Reno. However, for 35 years, one of the most active casinos in Nevada was "The Bullpen", a gambling area located in the Nevada State Prison.
There, inmates who were being rewarded for good behavior were allowed to play games like poker, blackjack, gin rummy and craps. There was also a sports betting station. Coins ranged from denominations of 5 cents to 5 dollars. The Bullpen was run by the inmates but outsiders, including state officials and members of the local Kiwanis Club, were welcomed in as well. The Bullpen was shut down in 1967 by a warden who disapproved of this type of "rehabilitation".
Circumventing the Bans
Throughout history, various jurisdictions have tried to ban gambling, mostly on "moral" grounds. But gambling operators have found some clever ways to circumvent those bans.
The first slot machines were banned in many states in the US because they paid out cash. Store owners substituted treats for cash. The machines came to be called "vending machines" which paid out pieces of gum or candy instead of coins.
To signify which flavor of gum was won, the reels featured symbols like cherries, melons, and oranges. This is why, 130 years later, they're still called "fruit machines" in many areas of the world. Cash was still king, so in many stores, winning players would simply take their gum to the bartender and trade it back for cash under the table. In saloons, the wins were paid out in drinks.
The game of pachinko is very popular in Japan but technically, gambling for cash is illegal in Japan. Pachinko parlors, which are everywhere in the country, circumvent the law by paying out "silver balls" for wins. The balls are then traded in for "special prize items (like lighters, pens or gold chips). The player then collects his special prizes and walks outside to a separate, tiny booth which is, technically, a different business. The booth is staffed by an operator who buys those "special" prizes from you for cash. Since the pachinko parlor doesn't pay out directly in cash and the cash booth doesn't offer games, they operate in a legal gray area.
Riverboat casinos, which today seem like a nice way to enjoy both a boat experience and some gambling entertainment, were created to meet the letter of a law that prohibited gambling on boats that were "underway." These massive barges sit near shore, so they don't fall under the prohibitions of gambling on a state's land, but don't travel anywhere so they don't fall afoul of prohibitions on floating gambling houses.
The River Casino in Illinois was built on a large, shallow pool of water to circumvent Illinois' ban on casinos while the Desert Cave Hotel Casino, built underground in Coober Pedy, Australia, falls outside Australia's gambling laws. For ships in international waters (typically 12 nautical miles offshore), the solution is even simpler since they are not obligated to follow the laws of any nearby coast. Gambling ships open their casino doors once the ship reaches a distance of 12 miles from land.
Roulette Superstition
On a European roulette wheel, the numbers on a roulette wheel start at zero and go up to 36, which means that they add up to 666. In the New Testament, 666 is considered to be the "number of the beast" and during the 18th and 19th centuries, the Catholic Church tried to use that tidbit of information to convince gamblers to stay away from the roulette table.
The rumor was circulated that Francois Blanc, the inventor of the perpetual motion machine upon which the game of roulette was based, made a deal with the devil that would allow him to understand the secrets of roulette. To that end, the Church said, the devil encouraged him to build the roulette wheel with 36 consecutively numbered pockets. 1+2+3+4…….+35+36=666, the number that is mentioned in the Christian Book of Revelations as a symbol that signifies evil, corruption and the devil himself.
Considering that roulette has long been the favorite game at French Riviera casinos, the effort seems to have been a significant failure.
Longest Poker Game
History's longest poker game was played at the Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone, Arizona, continuously from 1881 to 1889. The game went on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for 8 years. Participants paid $1000 to join and put up stakes of up to $100,000, a fortune in that era. Players included some of history's most noted and notorious figures such as Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.
Lucky Jackpot Winner
According to statisticians, based on the number of stops that a slot machine makes and based on the number of jackpot symbols that appear on each reel, the odds of winning a progressive jackpot are 1 in 49.8 million spins. Elmer Sherwin, a WWII vet, beat the trillions-to-one odds to win a Mega Jackpot TWICE on the Vegas Strip, once in 1989 and again in 2005.
Sherwin was playing at the Mirage Casino in 1989 when he bet $3 on a Megabucks machine and created a winning jackpot combination for a payout of $4.65 million. His win was the largest Vegas jackpot ever won to that date. Sixteen years later, Sherwin won a second jackpot at the Downtown Cannery Casino for a $21.1 million payout.
Keep up with casino trivia as you strive to beat the odds and enjoy your own gaming fun!
