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The History of Gambling

Gambling is an ancient game where players stake their money or prized possessions to win more than they have wagered. It works in a way where the player loses all rights to his money if he gets defeated and gains the rights over the opponent’s money if he wins. The whole game of gambling your money rest on the chance that you might win. Most of the time is based on probabilities like in the games of dice, cards lottery, or board games, but some sports need research like horse racing and sports betting. You will need to know the horse or the player you are betting on.

Gambling can be traced to way back in the stone age where archaeologists found the first evidence of the existence of a six-faced dice and later in the region of western Asia during the time of the Mesopotamian civilization. As a matter of fact, all ancient civilizations like China, Egypt, India and Rome had gambling as an essential part of their culture. China in 200 BC was using lottery slips made out of woodland it also introduced card games which were later popularized in the European countries. Although Greeks claim that it was, they who had invented the dice, that stands to be false. During archaeological expeditions in Egypt, researchers found a pair of dice in a tomb situated within a pyramid. It is said that chips were first used in the Roman empire when the administration had banned betting in the city and imposed hefty fines as a punishment. The people of Rome started playing with chips, so when they would be caught by the authorities, they could claim that they were not playing for money. This tradition later become popular and now to keep things easy, all casinos use chips.

Italy was the first country where casinos were set up as a mode of making gambling available to the masses. People of Venice e saw the rise of a casino in their city in the early 1600s while many small betting shops were set up around the waterways and players would move up and down in gondolas visiting these small betting tables. Baccarat was a popular card game in Italy played with two people on a table.  Later with European settlers, America also saw a new dawn in the world of gambling and after the great depression became home to one of the most significant casino towns in the world. With the rise of the internet in the late 1990s, gambling was provided with a new platform to attract customers without the pressure of running a casino in the middle of a desert. Today the online gambling market makes is estimated to be more than 50 billion US dollars.