What is gambling? Put in simple terms, it is the wagering of money or something of value on an event with an uncertain outcome. The main aim is to win money or material goods. Therefore, gambling relies on the elements of consideration, chance and prize. The outcome of the wager is often immediate, such as a single roll of dice, a spin of a roulette wheel, or a horse crossing the finish line, but longer time frames are also common, such as wagering on a future sports contest.
Today, we find that with the rise of the internet, there has been a growth in online casinos. In fact, gambling has practically shifted to the online world where people can wager their bets from the comfort of their own home, or on the tram even! Although we might have gotten used to things being done digitally, you might be curious about when gambling actually started.
You might be surprised to find out that gambling dates back to the Palaeolithic period, before written history! And here are some quick historical facts that you might not have known about gambling.
- For example, in Mesopotamia, the earliest six-sided dice dates back to about 3000 BC.
- In China, gambling houses were widespread in the first millennium BC, and betting on fighting animals was common.
- In the 10th century, lotto games and dominoes (the father of the game Pai Gow) appeared in China.
- Sticking to Asia, playing cards appeared in the ninth century in China, while records trace gambling in Japan back to the 14th century.
- Meanwhile, the popular game, poker, whose original name is As-Nas, is originally from Persia (current day Iran) and dates back to the 17th century.
- As for the first casino, known as the Ridotto, it started operating in Venice, Italy in 1638.
Now let’s take a closer look at three important dates in history.
2300 BC – Proof of Gambling in China
China appears to be the home of gambling as the earliest concrete evidence of gambling comes from ancient China. There, certain tiles have been discovered which appear to have been used in games of chance. In addition, the Chinese ‘Book of Songs’ refers to the “drawing of wood” which appears to suggest that the tiles formed part of a lottery-type game. In addition, slips known as ‘keno’ were used in about 200 BC as a form of lottery to fund certain state works and some believe this may have included the Great Wall of China.
500 BC – Gambling in Ancient Rome
The ancient Romans were popular for gambling on all types of things despite the fact that all forms of gambling were forbidden within the ancient city of Rome. Penalties were imposed on those caught and these penalties were worth four times the stake of the bet wagered. As a result, some Romans invented the first gambling chips, claiming that they were playing for chips and not for money.
800 AD – Playing Cards in China
Most research indicates that the first playing cards appeared in China in the 9th century, although the exact rules of the games they were used for have been lost. Some scholars suggest that the cards were both the game and the stake, while others believe the first packs of cards to have been paper forms of Chinese domino.
As time went by and the centuries moved on, games developed more and more with the establishment of the first casinos in Europe and a more formalised structure of the games. Meanwhile, societies began accepting gambling as legal activities and playing such wagering games stopped being banned in many places around the world. Today, we have traditional land-based casinos all over the world as well as a growing trend of online casinos, which are exhibiting a tendency of not stopping their growth and development anytime soon.