History of Gambling Part 3 — The Modern Day
By: Dragon Inc.
Tags: Gambling, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

History of Gambling Part 3 — The Modern Day

In the last article of this series we have introduced you to the world of the first gambling houses that appeared in Europe. But since then, gambling has been in a roller-coaster ride.

In Europe, the first casino was opened in Venice in 1683. After that, it followed a period of various restrictions regarding the gambling and card playing world, which ended in 1762, when the Redoute Casino opened its gates in Belgium, a casino that remains open to this day under the name of Casino Spa. Other casinos were opened throughout Europe, but the gambling was still under legal limitations. But in 1858, Le Grand Casino de Monte Carlo was opened — the first all-year casino resort, a paradise for gambling enthusiasts of that age and after this, as the saying goes, the rest is history.

In the United States, according to Nelson Rose, a noted gambling law expert, there were three waves of expansion in the gambling industry. The first wave came in with the landing of the first settlers, but spread with the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, so it started around the early 1600’s and ended in the middle 1800s. State and NGO’s sponsored lotteries were the legal gambling forms those days. And they grew so popular that two of the Ivy League colleges nowadays — Yale and Harvard built their dormitories using this type of funding! But the private operators that conducted lotteries often demonstrated to be dishonest in organizing them — therefore there was a gap of time when they were took outside the law in the late 19th Century.

The Gold Rush and the Wild West brought with them the second wave of US gambling world. And with them — thousand of saloons sprouted. The very word itself brings a well known image to our minds — the wooden front, the dusty streets, swinging doors, cowboys and fire water. The first American gambling houses were welcoming travelers to enjoy a game of chance. New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago and San Francisco were home of the most renowned gambling houses, but with the beginning of the 20th Century, the gambling industry was banned and outlawed by the state’s social reforms. This didn’t stop the gambling enthusiasts from their most preferred activity, and the state’s decision took the saloons and gambling houses to an underground operation instead of closing them. 1910 was the year of nationwide prohibition on gambling, but just like the alcohol prohibition, it continued in a discreet way — riverboats were remodeled as the railroad transportation started to gain interest. Riverboats on the Mississippi River incorporated casinos and gaming houses and became refuges for a nation held down by prohibition and increasingly strict gambling laws.

It all lasted until The Great Depression and The Wall Street Crash — the early 1930’s, when it all got legalized again, as a perspective of running away from poverty. In 1931, the entire state of Nevada legalized the gambling industry, paving the course for the young cities as Reno and Las Vegas. Tommy Hull and El Rancho will be a name with forever resonance in the gambling history. The beginning of the 20th Century found the gambling world still illegal in most of the states, these limitations forcing casinos into the hands of organized criminals. And after gambling was made lawful in Nevada, all the money that came from bootlegging spirits during the Prohibition Era, went to Las Vegas. Do Meyer Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Lucky Luciano, and Frank Costello sound familiar? After that, New Jersey legalized gambling. Atlantic City, 1977.

Nowadays, the casino experience in the United States includes much more than “a game of chance”. Accoutrements like luxurious hotels and tourist attractions form today a $240 billion industry.

Macau seemed at first an unexpected place to find the second Las Vegas. A tiny area, 11 square miles, situated on the southern coast of The People’s Republic of China, where gambling has been legitimate since the Portuguese government legalised it in this colony. Since then, it has been known worldwide as the “Gambling capital of the world”! Moreover, it is the single place in China where gambling is legal. But we will find more about the history and journey of Macau through time in the next and last series of this article.