The gentlemen in the following list may not know what an online casino is but they sure did appreciate the thrill of gambling. All of them earned fame and glory because of their talents and there is hardly anyone in today’s world not knowing their names and works. But I bet not many of you know that they used to enjoy gambling a lot! A quick fact for our younger section of readers: online casinos are 24 years old and long before their birth the world knew and loved gambling just as much as we do now.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

I recently read Dostoevsky’s novel the ‘Gambler’ which many believe is an autobiography reflecting on his own addiction to roulette. While reading, I felt this man’s love for gambling. But he got to know betting in a way we barely know it today. His first encounter with roulette was at Wiesbaden’s casino back in 1863. As one of the most beautiful casinos in the world, I’d say Dostoevsky had a great start and the love was instant. Unfortunately, this passion brought a lot of trouble for the genius writer as it turned into a gambling addiction. Ironically, the short novel (which I totally recommend) was written with the purpose of paying off some of his accumulated debts.

Giacomo Casanova

I’m sure that gambling is not what pops up in your mind when thinking about the Italian writer and lawyer – Casanova. His famous ‘womanizer’ reputation was way more prominent than anything else he did. Around the 18th century, gambling was a popular activity in the ’high circles’ and he totally fell for it. In his memoirs, he even admitted having been tutored by professional gamblers and wrote about his strong emotional reactions when losing significant amounts of money. As opposed to Dostoevsky, Casanova never experienced a gambling addiction, he mostly played for the quick money or to get the desired attention of a certain lady.

King Henry VIII

This accomplished leader in England’s history was famous for the separation from Roman Catholic Church, for having six wives and guess what else? Of course, being England’s Number One Gambler! He loved playing cards and dice, but his favourite game was ‘Bragg’ which is believed to be a very old version of poker as we know it today. According to sources he was rarely lucky and used to lose lavish amounts competing against monarchy leaders and other royalties. He even lost the beloved Jesus Bells of St Paul’s church on a single roll of dice. As a result, his opponent Sir Miles Partridge was punished with murder by the king himself. This made it very difficult for him to find gambling companions in the future.

And now, a few centuries later when online gambling rules the industry, it would all look a bit different for our three gamblers! Let’s see, I picture Dostoevsky taking a break from writing by loading up his favourite online casino. Meanwhile, Casanova is walking through the busy streets of Venice and gambling on his smartphone. And lastly, King Henry gets to lose a huge amount of money at a secret poker tournament. I know it’s a weird picture but if you want to join these three gentlemen on their time-travel-gambling mission, visit www.bestonlinecasinos.org.uk to make sure you land safely on the top online casinos of our century!

In the game “Assassin’s Creed III”, you play as a young Native-American warrior quietly helping George Washington complete his revolution and establish the United States of America, in the misguided hope that this will save his people. The “Assassin’s Creed” series has always prided itself on fully immersing the player in a virtual world that feels as accurate to the real historical era it’s portraying as possible… Minus a couple of ancient magical artifacts, of course. But there was one thing that stood out to me – you can walk into any tavern you want and play games for in-game currency, like Twelve Men’s Morris. And that actually caught me a bit by surprise. Wasn’t America a nation of puritans that despised anything and everything they deemed impure, including gambling? Wasn’t there a huge uphill battle to have the practice legalized, with only a few states allowing gambling even today? Did the creators of “Assassin’s Creed” get it wrong? Well, I did what I do best, and I opened up the dusty old tomes (by which I mean I went to Google) and started doing some research! And believe it or not, but gambling was not only completely legal in the colonies, but also helped the growing country in a huge way!

Now, it’s very important to keep in mind that the early settlers weren’t ALL puritans. Sure, there were those that despised European values and wished to start fresh, from scratch, but there were also very traditional Englishmen, Spaniards and French people who were quite happy with the way things were going in their homeland. They also (involuntarily on both sides) shared the continent with the Native Americans, who were super into gambling. And I’m not just talking about the stereotype of Native Americans owning casinos today, I’m talking about the little-known fact of Native Americans owning casinos 800 years ago. And on top of that, you need to consider that a huge number of settlers were criminals or generally coming from the lower-class (because if you were in the upper class, why would you ever leave your cushy home to settle in some mud-infested dump?), and to them gambling was a huge part of life, legal or not.

But what if I told you that, without gambling, it’s likely that many colonies wouldn’t have taken off at all? Enter the Virginia Company of London, a stockholding company in the vein of the East India Company (which you may remember from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies), decided to finance the creation and expansion of British colonies in the new world. The name Virginia comes from the newly established state of Virginia (which in turn comes from Elizabeth I, whose nickname was The Virgin Queen), where the Virginia Company was planning to build colonies and establishments. Except, uh-oh, seems like there’s a problem ahead – while the Crown was A-OK with increasing its reach, the Queen refused to pay up for it, and the Company couldn’t afford the massive costs of construction. So what did they do? They held a good, old-fashioned lottery, of course! Pay a pound, and you may win a hundred pounds! It sounds like a deal too good to pass up, and so not many did. The lotteries generated thousands, enabling the creation of several colonies in Virginia (including the famous Jamestown), right up until the Crown ordered them stopped, claiming they were draining the English capital.

The lotteries didn’t stop, though – they merely moved to the New World. Every single major colony held lotteries in order to fund construction of certain landmarks and building deemed to be important enough. For example, most huge American universities (including, but not limited to, Harvard, Yale and Columbia) were funded by lotteries. Alas, it was not meant to last – as the Puritans grew in numbers, so, too, did their ideology that the New World needed to be free of anything they perceived to be morally repugnant. As such, in the mid-1800s, gambling became a target and the lotteries needed to be put to a swift, yet decisive end. And while America would dabble in gambling a couple more times during its lifetime, like two lovers that constantly break up and get back together, the moment when President Jackson (ironically an avid gambler himself) outlawed lotteries of any kind marked the end of what’s known as the First Wave of Legal Gambling. There would be two more, the latter of which we’re currently in, but alas, it was an unfortunate end for a harmless activity that helped the growing nation so much throughout its lifetime.

The Colosseum. We’ve seen it in countless pieces of media – stellar movies such as “Gladiator”, or videogames like “Shadow of Rome”. We’ve watched documentaries, some of us have even visited this historical site ourselves, but not too many suspect just how important it was in gambling history. It was completed in 80 AD after only 10 years of work (which just blows my mind on so many levels – we’re talking about a building roughly the size of a shopping mall, with numerous tunnels, elevators and even canals for ship battles, and it was designed and completed within 10 years 2000 years ago) and was meant to be Emperor Vespasian’s gift to the people. Of course, that “gift” most likely came with certain implications meant to fill his own pockets.

The thing that I should point out before I continue onwards with this article is that gambling was particularly common in Rome (it was a custom which, among many things, they took from the Greeks), to the point where Romans often prayed and gave offerings to the goddess Fortuna for good luck during gambling. Everybody, from the Emperor down to the lowest peasant, gambled, and despite the fact that we so often associate gladiators with the Colosseum, gladiator schools existed hundreds of years before it was ever conceived. However, most arenas were privately owned, and as a result were out of the Emperor’s reach. By inviting them to the biggest arena right in the center of Rome, literally down the street from the Roman Forum, he had the perfect excuse to tax them. Gambling, on the other hand, was not taxed, which is quite peculiar – today, all gambling activities are susceptible to pretty huge taxes, so why was gambling in ancient Rome not taxed, considering just how popular it was? Well, we’re getting into some complicated waters here, so stick with me.

You see, the Romans loved their gambling a little too much, to the point where it often inspired riots and other misdemeanors. Sure, today it may seem strange to imagine that simply betting on a gladiatorial match or a game of dice could inspire a riot, but it’s not all that different from events that transpire today during, say, football matches. Regardless, gambling was legally outlawed during the reign of Emperor Augustus, with the compromise that common folks were only ever allowed to bet during Saturnalia – a week-long festival dedicated to the god Saturn. As a result, gambling was officially considered a “holy” activity and could not be taxed. On the other hand, Roman officials were pretty much the proto example of “Do as I say, not as I do”, and quite often engaged in gambling activities between themselves despite the ban. Augustus himself once lost 30,000 sesterces while betting on a Colosseum match (30 times more than a soldier’s annual salary).

Now that we’ve explored the basics of gambling in ancient Rome, let’s take some time to list a couple of random facts! It’s important to note that women, while allowed to watch the gladiatorial games (after all, many of the product endorsements that the gladiators did catered specifically to housewives… so not a lot has changed in the past 2000 years), but they were not allowed to bet on them, not even during Saturnalia. Instead, they had their own festival – Bona Dea – where they could bet on various games. Speaking of games, dice were very popular as a means of betting in or around the Colosseum, sometimes even more so than betting on the events happening in the Arena! To some Romans, gambling was merely one of the many attractions that the Colosseum had to offer rather than the main event. Of course, with the prevalence of dice games, many dealers began using loaded dice in order to achieve their desired results and scam poor people out of their money. It’s unknown whether such scams happened during betting on gladiatorial matches or other Colosseum attractions, but I’d be willing to bet they did.

That about sums it up! In conclusion, outside of Rome’s elite who had very little regard for their own laws, the majority weren’t allowed to gamble or bet despite really wanting to (aside from one week a year). Perhaps with a bit of foresight, and some regulation, the Emperor could’ve earned even more profits from his undoubtedly highly expensive “gift” to his people, but alas, with all the things that were similar at the time, an equal number were also quite different.

We know for a fact that gambling is really, really old. We’ve got evidence of it taking place as far as the 3rd century BC, though it’s generally presumed that it has existed in one form or another for way, WAY longer. Still, most people (scientists or not) assumed that casinos are a generally new invention, as in, they’re not older than 2-3 centuries. Before then, most dealers and croupiers used to work in taverns, arenas or stadiums, generally places where people would be very likely to make a bet. There weren’t any specialized places that were meant specifically for gambling… Except, as it turns out, there were. And we wouldn’t have known about them if it wasn’t for a rather shocking discovery.

What you’re looking at are gambling chips found in what is currently known as the oldest casino ever discovered. It was created – where else? – in a Utah, inside a cave, by an unknown tribe of Native Americans. According to researchers, there’s roughly 10,000 gambling pieces, not all of which are chips. Some represent tools used to play the various casino games, but since we don’t understand their rules it’s hard to really tell what each of the found instruments was used for. We do know that, based on the sheer number of them within the cave, this was certainly a place of much reverence for the people of the tribe.

And the kicker? According to scientists, the tools date back to the 13th century – hundreds of years before the previous record for oldest recorded casino. The cave, alongside all of its contents, was discovered in mid-2015, and have since created quite a stir due to their implications. John Ives, an archeologist working on the site, claims that pretty much every member of the tribe spent their time off hiding from the scorching sun inside the cave playing casino games, which… Honestly, isn’t really all that different from what’s happening in the present. While the site is still being investigated, it has already given us a whole lot of knowledge not just about the Native American civilization around the 13th century (which we already knew was a lot more advanced than what Columbus found two centuries later), but about the meaning of gambling within their culture in general.

I’d like to take you back to the year 100 AD. Civilization has been around for a few thousand years already, but that doesn’t mean that most people – especially Europeans outside of Rome – are civilized yet. Wars and plunders are commonplace, and whenever there is a dispute between two nations it’s rarely solved with diplomacy and negotiations. More often than not, the slightest insult results in marching armies. Each ruler seeks to expand his territories by stealing from his neighbours while trying to keep his own provinces safe. Due to this tense atmosphere, it’s quite easy for certain regions to develop hostilities between each other. Two such regions are the Kingdom of Norway and the Kingdom of Sweden, whose kings have been trying to settle on their borders for years. I am not sure exactly how this conflict came to be, but I have a feeling that it’s due to the fact that both rulers were named Olaf (“There can be only one” and all that). Anyway, It seems inevitable that the dispute can only be solved through warfare… And then King Olaf of Norway receives a letter summoning him to a meeting with the Swedish King Olaf at Konungahella. Quite confused, the King of Norway takes some of his most trusted guards and goes there, not wishing to ruin an already very delicate relationship. In Konungahella, the king of Norway would meet personally with king Olaf of Sweden – a mild-mannered man who is surprisingly agreeable and easy to talk to. They spend hours negotiating their borders, finally agreeing on everything except for one thing – the province of Hising, which sometimes belonged to Sweden and sometimes to Norway. Unable to decide who should have it, the kings agree to cast dice for it, swearing that whoever rolls the higher number will own the territory. The Swedish king throws first, getting a pair of sixes. Quite content with his result, he assures king Olaf of Norway that he should not bother, but the king tries anyway, and much to everyone’s surprise, he also gets a pair of sixes. A reroll is immediately agreed upon, but the results are just as similar as the kings’ names. For the third time they roll, with the Swedish king once again receiving a pair of sixes. Meanwhile, the king of Norway gets one six… While the other die shatters in half from the impact, its sides turning up a seven. Seeing this as a sign from God, the king of Sweden immediately concedes the territory.

While this story is, in all likeliness, not true at all (the odds of two people throwing 5 pairs of sixes one after another are so low that it might as well be considered impossible), it serves to illustrate just how prominent gambling was in human consciousness. In the eyes of the people, gambling was so big that the results of a dice were considered God’s intervention, enough to solve a dispute between enemies! Of course, that shouldn’t come as a surprise at all – gambling and betting have been around since at least 2,300 BC, and while the modern casino games we play today such as blackjack and roulette are only about 250-300 years old, casino, in one form or another, has been around for much longer than that, and it has had a tremendous impact on the public consciousness throughout history. That is why this site exists – to explore and celebrate the rich history of gambling, betting and casino and to relay interesting anecdotes from it that you may or may not have heard of! I hope I can help you learn something new!