Fun Facts You Didn't Know about Gambling and Casinos

You've probably read articles like "interesting facts about casinos" or "Amazing tales about roulette." Casinoz also posted several similar pieces covering different aspects of gambling.

Amusing Stories from the Gambling World

This article is organized in the same format but includes no banal stories. Although many Casinoz readers are very erudite and surprising you is not an easy task, most likely, you will read about most of these facts for the first time.

Do not think that it will be further discussed that the sum of the numbers on the roulette wheel is 666, and there is no clock in the casino hall to make customers lose track of time. The article contains much fewer known points.

An Eight-Year Poker Game

You've been in a casino for a couple of days, and you think you're almost a marathon runner? It's nothing compared to playing poker for nearly eight and a half years.

In 1881, Billy and Lottie Hutchinson opened a club called the Bird Cage Theater in Arizona. There was a high-stakes poker room in the basement. There was a game going on around the clock and without days off.

It did not stop for eight years, five months, and three days.

It was a legendary place visited by almost all the best poker players. During that time, tens of millions of dollars passed through the table. The owners' income was not specified, but it is known that they took ten percent of the bank.

Video Poker without Cash Payouts

The old video poker machines were mechanical. They appeared in the nineteenth century. Most often, they were installed in bars.

The arrangement of the machines was as simple as possible:

• Playing cards were depicted on five rotating reels.
• There was no paytable.
• When a poker combination landed on the screen, the lucky player went to the bartender for a reward, such as cigarettes or alcohol.

The modern system of payout calculation was invented a little later and soon became the standard for this gambling genre.

Dice for a Snack

Legal gambling with an official licensing system originated in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, but Americans began to play for money long before that. Many preferred to try their luck in early versions of craps and other six-sided dice gambling.

If amid the underground gameplay, cops suddenly appeared, violators of the law tried as quickly as possible to get rid of the evidence. Small bones were easily hidden in the stomach, so they were immediately swallowed. It's hard to say whether this trick caused digestive problems, but it helped avoid trouble with the police.

In the nineteenth century, the owners of British underground casinos even hired people who swallowed dice during such raids.

Napoleon and Blackjack

Several sources confirm that Napoleon Bonaparte loved gambling. The notorious emperor especially liked blackjack. This name was not yet in use. In France, one of its first versions was called Vingt-et-Un. It was this game that appealed to Napoleon.

When the legendary warlord was exiled to the island of Elba, he had plenty of free time and could afford to enjoy a long game of cards.

Gambling as the Savior of FedEx

FedEx was not yet a large corporation in the early seventies of the twentieth century. Moreover, its fate hung in the balance at one point. In 1973, the company's founder, Frederic Smith, went to Las Vegas with five thousand dollars in his pocket—all his money.

Playing blackjack, he raised twenty-seven thousand, which he invested back into the business.

So he managed to save FedEx, and within a couple of years, the company became profitable.

Visiting 74 Casinos in 24 Hours

How many casinos have you visited during the day? Two, three, five, ten?

The world record belongs to Kimo Ah Yun and Gary Meyer. On the nineteenth-twentieth of October 2017, they had twenty-four hours to play in seventy-four Las Vegas, Nevada, USA casinos. Their achievement is listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

The previous record also belonged to this couple. Two years earlier, they had visited sixty-nine gambling establishments.

Gambling in Prison

Everyone knows the prisoners are playing cards, dice, and other games of chance. But all over the world, this activity is illegal, and only in Nevada prisons were they officially allowed to play poker, craps, and blackjack. It was also possible to make sports betting bets behind bars.

We speak in the past tense because these entertainments lasted for thirty-five years and ended in 1967. Other prison authorities decided that the money game had a detrimental effect on serving-time criminals and created an unhealthy atmosphere in the institution.

The First Interracial Casino in the U.S.

In the United States, the first casino legally allowed African Americans began work only in 1955. We are talking about the famous Moulin Rouge Casino.

The press covered this fact, and Life magazine even put a photo of the Moulin Rouge casino on the cover.

A Service Station as the Slot Birthplace

Did you know the first slot machine was not presented to the public in a casino? Mechanical slots were invented by Charles Fey, who worked as an auto mechanic.

When he created the Liberty Bell machine, he installed it to entertain customers. The novelty was in demand, and casinos began to order it. Thus began the era of slot machines.

Tips on Playing Dice from Aristotle

The famous ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who studied under Plato and raised Alexander the great, was partial to gambling. He was particularly attracted to dice.

He even wrote a treatise in which he connected them with the idea of the structure of the world. In addition, Aristotle laid out several practical recommendations for increasing the chances of winning by playing dice for money.

Nuclear Explosions in Las Vegas

This is not the plot of a post-apocalyptic film but actual events from the history of Las Vegas. In 1951, the U.S. Department of Energy conducted a large-scale nuclear test a hundred kilometers from the city.

Interestingly, this attracted even more tourists. They came to watch the explosions, and the subject dominated the advertising campaigns. One of the casinos even held a beauty contest called "Miss Atomic Energy."

The Woman Holding the First Casino License in Las Vegas

You think in the early days of gambling in Nevada, casinos were only opened by male gangsters. The first official license for gambling in Las Vegas was obtained by a respectable woman, the wife of a railway worker and the mother of three sons.

On September 5, 1920, Mamie Stocker opened the Northern Club on Fremont Street. In 1931, when Las Vegas legalized casinos, she immediately acquired a license, becoming the first legal operator of a gambling establishment in the city. Five games were available at Northern Club Casino: stud poker, draw poker, lowball poker, bridge, and 500.

Mamie had lived ninety-seven years, outliving many gambling bigwigs in Nevada.

Angel Eye against Card-Sharpers

Some progressive casinos use a device called the Angel Eye. This system is equipped with a shoe used in blackjack or baccarat.

It scans all the cards players receive and ensures that scammers do not exchange them among themselves. The security service gets an automatic notification if the customer has a card he did not receive during the delivery.

"Angel's eye" also helps to deal with dealer errors, the introduction of extraneous cards in the gameplay, and other undesirable actions.

Mini Casino in a Taxi

If you find yourself in London, you can try your luck by playing with the smallest gambling establishment on the planet. The famous Grosvenor Casino allows customers to play right in the back seat of a taxi.

In the car, there is a table at which the real dealer works. There is also a small bar and a T.V. broadcasting sports matches.

A Casino as the Sandwich Birthplace

A popular dish consisting of bread slices with meat and other ingredients between them is famous worldwide. It owes its name to John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich.

The English diplomat, who lived in the eighteenth century, served as the First Lord of the Admiralty, but his contemporaries did not ever mention his political activities. He went down in history as an addictive gambler who spent days playing cards.

John was so engaged in the process that he didn't want to stop for lunch. He found a way out by placing a piece of meat between two slices of bread. At first, it shocked the prudish public, but over time the dish became popular and was later named after Montague's title.

Conclusion

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