Undoubtedly, Las Vegas is the ” Cradle of casinos “, while China is located in some of the largest land-based casinos in the world. Many people gamble in casinos, but most of them do not know the curious and unknown things about casinos and gambling. This article will inform you about ten things a casino player should know.
Curious things about casinos and online gambling that you probably didn’t know
Undoubtedly, Las Vegas is the “Cradle of casinos”, while China is located in some of the largest land-based casinos in the world. Many people gamble in casinos, but most of them do not know the curious and unknown things about casinos and gambling. This article will inform you about ten things a casino player should know.
It is an indisputable fact, with the emergence of online casinos the gambling industry has been completely transformed. The introduction of online gambling and last but not least the coronavirus pandemic has made the casino world more popular than ever. This popularity is also due to the fact that players can play online slots and table games at any time without leaving home due to health restrictions.
Origins of casinos and slot machines
As everyone knows, macaroni and pizza are Italian creations. But almost nobody knows that casinos also originated in Italy. The word casino comes from the Italian casino, which means house in the country. It seems that originally there were certain villas in the countryside that were used as a place of entertainment for the nobility and the upper middle class. One of these entertainments was gambling. When these places moved to the cities or their surroundings, they have kept the original name of casinos, which is used in almost all languages.
Slot machines first appeared in 1887 and were introduced in casinos by Charles August Fey, a German citizen who moved to San Francisco at the end of the 19th century. Mr. Fey, who at the time was working as a mechanic, completed the construction of the first coin-accepting device in 1894 and a year later, built his second slot machine that quickly became very popular. It is then, when Mr. Fey saw the opportunity, he quit his job and began large-scale production of his machines.
Originally, Mr. Fey’s devices offered the opportunity to win cigars, but the demand for cash payments caused him to modify his creations to give money as a reward. In 1899 he developed a device called the “Liberty Bell,” the first slot machine model as we know it today. The machine was equipped with three reels with six different symbols: diamond, heart, sword, horseshoe, stars and a cracked Liberty Bell. The reels were set in motion when the lever on the side was pushed down and the winnings depended on the symbols the player got. The highest prize of 50 cents was awarded when the 3 Liberty Bells were hit.
The largest win on a physical slot machine is $39.7 million and occurred on March 21, 2003. The lucky winner, a computer scientist, won 39.7 million dollars after betting 100 dollars at the Excalibur Casino Hotel in Las Vegas, a prize that, to this day, appears in the Guinness Book of Records as the highest.
The largest online slot machine jackpot is €17.8 million. The jackpot was won by a player in Finland, playing online slot Mega Fortune by NetEnt.
Poker and roulette facts
The longest poker game in history took place in Arizona in 1881 and lasted a total of 3,077 days (8 years, 5 months and 3 days). Poker can be a very lucrative game. There are players who play poker professionally and make enough money to cover all their needs without having to do any other work.
In this case the Australian communications tycoon Robert Maxwell could perfectly well be called the illustrious casino loser, since, according to the legend that surrounds him. He was able in 3 minutes to lose 2 million dollars playing simultaneously at 3 roulette tables, which he subsequently accompanied with a week of gambling in which he accumulated losses of $20 million.
The most famous casino bet was made by Ashley Revell, a British man who after selling all his possessions (including clothes) went to Las Vegas where he literally gambled all his life. The $135,000 obtained from the sale of his belongings were bet on a single roulette game, he won and doubled the amount, besides being reflected in a documentary and gaining some fame in the media.
The largest land-based casino in the USA has an area of 600,000 square feet. The casino is called WinStar World Casino and is located in Thackerville, about an hour’s drive from Oklahoma City.
Normally, the return to player (RTP) percentage for physical slot machines is 70%. Some countries, by law set the minimum return per player at 70%.
Monaco is the country with the most millionaires in the world. Monegasque residents do not pay income tax. There are currently 13,400 millionaires living in Monaco, equivalent to just over a third of the total population (38,550 people). However, gambling is illegal for Monaco’s citizens and it is forbidden to enter gambling halls.
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In Japan it is illegal to gamble for money. However, Pachinko gambling generates 30 times more money in Japan than Las Vegas casinos in the United States and twice as much money as Japan’s automobile exports.
Despite the fact that betting money is illegal in the Asian country, the companies dedicated to the Pachinko game devised a way to evade the law and be able to deliver the prizes. The way these machines work is as follows: money is introduced into the Pachinko machine to buy small metal balls in large quantities. These balls are thrown with different force by turning a wheel on the right side of the machine.
The goal is to bounce the balls into certain slots to increase the score. Of course, other slots may cause players to lose the metal balls, or have them returned to them so that they can play again. The machines are designed to only award a certain amount of prizes, so the owner of the Pachinko will always win money. As the user plays more, hopefully, they will win more metal balls to continue in the vice or redeem them for things.
Taking advantage of a legal trap, Pachinko owners allow players to use the metal balls to exchange them for prizes: stuffed animals, consoles, food or even soap. These prizes are then sold for money in a shop that is usually located almost next to where the Pachinko is located, so it becomes a way to get money for betting, albeit in a somewhat complex way by having to use an intermediary.
This bartering process was until recently controlled by the Yakuza, a well-known Japanese mafia. The Pachinko business, with more than 10,000 locations throughout Japan and whose most popular machines are manufactured by console companies such as Sega, is dominated by Japanese of Korean origin.
Gambling addiction is so great that Japan has been almost forced to legalize casinos with other games offering win quotas and attendance days per person. Therefore, for the Japanese government it is becoming complicated to curb a game like Pachinko that mixes leisure, gambling and even centuries-old customs such as bartering.
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