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by Peter L. Bernstein
"Gaming and risk taking possibly defines the human spirit
more than any other activity. Many have conjectured on what sets human kind apart
from the rest of the animal kingdom. Is it the ability to reason? The abilty to
use tools? Or is it the desire to gamble with destiny and the odds? Perhaps this
is why casinos and gaming are so pervasive. Gambling is in our blood and the nature
of our very being. It has been with us through out history and the reason for
where we are today." Andrew MacDonald
Excerpt from "Against the Gods
: The Remarkable Story of Risk" by Peter L. Bernstein.
Gambling has held human beings in thrall for millennia. It has been engaged
in everywhere, from the dregs of society to the most respectable circles.
Pontius Pilate's soldiers cast lots for Christ's robe as He suffered on
the cross. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was regularly accompanied
by his personal croupier. The Earl of Sandwich invented the snack that
bears his name so that he could avoid leaving the gaming table in order
to eat. George Washington hosted games in his tent during the American
Revolution. Gambling is synonymous with the Wild West. And "Luck Be a
Lady Tonight" is one of the most memorable numbers in Guys and Dolls,
a musical about a compulsive gambler and his floating crap game.
The earliest-known form of gambling was a kind of dice game played with
what was known as an astragalus, or knuckle-bone. This early ancestor
of today's dice was a squarish bone taken from the ankles of sheep or
deer, solid and without marrow, and so hard as to be virtually indestructible.
Astragali have surfaced in archaeological digs in many parts of the world.
Egyptian tomb paintings picture games played with astragali dating from
3500 BC, and Greek vases show young men tossing the bones into a circle.
Although Egypt punished compulsive gamblers by forcing them to hone stones
for the pyramids, excavations show that the pharoahs were not above using
loaded dice in their own games. Craps, an American invention, derives
from various dice games brought into Europe via the Crusades. Those games
were generally referred to as "hazard", from al zahr, the Arabic word
for dice.
Card games developed in Asia from ancient forms of fortune telling, but
they did not become popular in Europe until the invention of printing.
Cards originally were large and square, with no identifying figures or
pips in the corners. Court cards were printed with only one head instead
of double-headed, which meant that players often had to identify them
from the feet - turning the cards around would reveal a holding of court
cards. Square corners made cheating easy for players who could turn down
a tiny part of the corner to identify cards in the deck later on. Double-headed
court cards and cards with rounded corners came into use only in the nineteenth
century.
Like craps, poker is an American variation on an older form - the game
is only about 150 years old. David Hayano has described poker as "Secret
ploys, monumental deceptions, calculated strategies, and fervent beliefs
[with] deep, invisible structures……A game to experience rather than to
observe." According to Hayano, about forty million Americans play poker
regularly, all confident of their ability to outwit their opponents.
Date Posted: 04-Jan-1999
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