The Oldest ways of Gambling

Gambling has been a popular activity amongst people across generations after generations, dating back to prehistory, while leaving remains from Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece and even Ancient China. Some even say it dates back to about 3,000 BC, back in the Paleolithic age, before all history even started being written. We can see numerous findings of very old gambling miscellaneous items that are tested and proven to date back to these historic times. We have come across many dice of different shapes and sizes, as well as coins which were not used as legitimate currency and numerous paintings which show people gambling, as shown in the picture below, where one can see an ancient roman painting of what seems to tbe two Romans playing a table game, and what seems to be an ancient Roman dice with many sides.

Gambling in Ancient China

The earliest gambling evidence to be found were unearthed tiles from Ancient China, which look a lot like something used for a raffle or lottery. These tiles are believed to have been used in around 2300 BC. Later on in 200 BC, we can see that the Chinese used lotteries to help fund large projects, such as the Great Wall of China and other massive state efforts.

Meanwhile in Ancient Rome

Even though laws clearly stated that any form of gambling was strictly forbidden in Ancient Rome, we still know that the Romans loved to gamble. Those caught gambling were penalized hefty fees, and the more they gambled, the worse they were, since the fee was four times the amount they had bet. The Romans then came up with an ingenious idea, creating false currency to exchange for actual money and bet with, called chips, so that when they get caught, they could successfully claim that the game had no stakes, since all they used was worthless fake money. Cheeky! Chips are still being used in casinos to this day.

The earliest found card games.

Studies agree that playing cards have been around since the early 800’s, in China. We don’t know what exact game they played or what rules it had, or if there was more than one card game, but some suggest that the cards were paper forms of Chinese Dominoes, while others say the cards were stake and game, similar to nowadays’ trading cards.

How it progressed

In the 1400s, appeared the first game that is still played nowadays in casinos all around the world, the game of Baccarat, which had appeared first in Italy and France. Later in 1600, Blackjack started being played all around the world, which led to the opening of the first Casino in Italy in 1638, then in 1796 came the Roulette wheel, 1829 gave us poker, and in 1891, came the first ever slot machine. Jump a hundred years later and you have your first ever online casino. All these you can try out on sites like comeon casino and many more.