50 Fun Facts About Casino

The word casino comes from the Italian casa. What did it originally mean?

The Ridotto in Venice, the first known European gambling house, was not even called a casino when it opened in 1638.

Where and when did the Ridotto, the West's first government-sanctioned gambling house, open?

The Great Council opened it for carnival season after concluding it could not stop citizens gambling anyway; the top game was the card game basetta.

Which US state legalized casino gambling in 1931, giving America its first legal casinos?

New Jersey did not follow until 1976, when voters approved casinos for Atlantic City.

Which city has overtaken Las Vegas as the world's largest gambling market by revenue?

Its casino industry is about seven times the size of Las Vegas's, and baccarat taxes are its biggest single source of public funds.

What term describes the built-in advantage that guarantees the casino profits in the long run?

Poker is the exception: players compete against each other and the casino takes a rake instead.

What is the casino industry's nickname for its closed-circuit surveillance system?

Security is split between a physical force on the floor and a specialised surveillance department upstairs.

Which French mathematician is credited with an early roulette while trying to build a perpetual motion machine?

The game as we know it was being played in Paris by 1796, complete with a zero and a double zero for the bank.

Who introduced the single-zero roulette wheel in 1843, and where?

They did it to undercut rival casinos' double-zero wheels; François Blanc later ran Monte Carlo.

What is the casino's mathematical advantage on a standard American double-zero roulette wheel?

European single-zero wheels give the house 2.7 percent, which is why serious players seek them out.

Why is green used for the zero pockets on a roulette wheel?

Early Paris wheels had used red for the single zero and black for the double zero, which caused obvious problems.

What did Ashley Revell bet his entire $135,300 net worth on in a single 2004 roulette spin?

He did it at the Plaza in Las Vegas and won, doubling his money.

Which Spanish author gave the first written reference to twenty-one, the ancestor of blackjack?

His story Rinconete y Cortadillo, written around 1601, features card cheats in Seville playing veintiuno.

According to popular legend, what bonus gave blackjack its name?

The bonus disappeared but the name stuck; a two-card 21 is still called a natural.

Which 1962 book by Edward Thorp launched card counting into the mainstream?

Thorp used an IBM computer to verify the 1956 basic strategy worked out by four Army mathematicians known as the Four Horsemen.

Roughly what edge does the casino hold in well-played blackjack, one of the cheapest table games?

It is the most widely played casino banking game in the world.

In the Hi-Lo counting system, which values count as plus one?

Tens, faces and aces count minus one; a rising count means the shoe favours the player.

Which 1988 film spread the myth that card counters memorise every card in a six-deck shoe?

Real counters keep a simple running tally; the MIT team's story became the 2008 film 21.

Which 2008 film, produced by and starring Kevin Spacey, was based on the MIT Blackjack Team?

Ben Mezrich's book Bringing Down the House inspired it; the team ran from 1979 into the 2000s.

Which fifth reel symbol, beside horseshoes, diamonds, spades and hearts, gave Charles Fey's 1890s slot machine its name?

The bell gave the machine its name; the BAR symbol came later from a stick of Bell-Fruit gum.

The BAR symbol on slot machines originated as a picture of what?

Fruit symbols on early machines matched the flavours of gum paid out as prizes to dodge gambling laws.

Why are slot machines nicknamed one-armed bandits?

Most modern machines are driven by random number generators and buttons, and the lever is decorative if present.

Bally's 1963 Money Honey was the first slot machine to do what?

The first video slot followed in 1976 from Fortune Coin Co. in California.

Craps descends from an English dice game called what?

Bernard de Marigny is said to have brought it from London to New Orleans around 1805; 'crabs' was the London slang for the losing rolls of two and three.

At the dice table, a come-out roll of 2, 3 or 12 is called what?

Rolling a 12 is boxcars, and rolling a hard eight has nicknames from 'Eighter from Decatur' to 'Ozzie and Harriet.'

Punto banco, chemin de fer and banque are the three popular variants of which game?

In punto banco the drawing rules are fixed; in the other two, players make choices.

In which 1953 novel does James Bond face Le Chiffre across the card table?

Ian Fleming's unabridged text includes a primer on the game for readers who did not know it.

Poker star Phil Ivey won a fortune at Atlantic City's Borgata using which technique?

The technique exploits tiny asymmetries on card backs; courts later ordered his winnings returned.

Who is forbidden from entering the gaming rooms of the Casino de Monte-Carlo?

The casino was long the main income of the Grimaldi family, and it is run by the Société des Bains de Mer.

Which architect, famous for the Paris opera house, helped expand the Monte Carlo casino in 1878-79?

The original building was finished in 1863 to a design by Gobineau de la Bretonnerie.

Which was the first casino to open in Atlantic City, in May 1978?

Governor Brendan Byrne cut the ribbon at the converted Chalfonte-Haddon Hall Hotel.

The Venetian Macao, opened in 2007, is the largest single-structure hotel on which continent?

It is the tenth-largest building in the world by floor area and the second-largest casino.

Macau's gambling industry is roughly how many times larger than that of Las Vegas?

The former Portuguese territory ended its casino monopoly after the 1999 handover and let in foreign operators.

Which real Las Vegas casino boss inspired Robert De Niro's Sam 'Ace' Rothstein in Casino (1995)?

Rosenthal ran the Stardust and three other casinos for the Chicago Outfit from 1968 to 1981; the film's Tangiers stands in for the Stardust.

Who won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for playing chip hustler Ginger McKenna in Casino?

Joe Pesci played the made man Nicky Santoro, based on Tony Spilotro.

In the 2001 film Ocean's Eleven, how much do Danny's crew set out to steal from Terry Benedict?

The vault serves the Bellagio, the Mirage and the MGM Grand; the 1960 original starred the Rat Pack.

Which 2018 spin-off of the heist franchise had an all-female lead cast?

Sandra Bullock led the crew in a Met Gala heist.

Which casino game, legend says, helped raise money to build the Great Wall of China?

Chinese railroad workers brought it to the American West in the 19th century, and its house edge in casinos runs 20 to 40 percent.

What are the odds of hitting all 20 numbers on a 20-spot keno ticket?

Nobody has ever done it, and keno's house edge is among the worst in the building.

What do all US gambling states require gaming chips to carry for identification?

Some casinos do also embed RFID tags to track chips and beat counterfeiters.

The earliest six-sided dice, found in Mesopotamia, date to about when?

Gambling houses were widespread in China in the first millennium BC, and Elizabeth I chartered an English lottery drawn in 1569.

What was the estimated size of the legal global gambling market in 2009?

Governments in Monaco and Macau depend heavily on gambling revenue.

What is the casino term for someone skilled enough to overcome the built-in odds?

Card counters are the classic example, and casinos subscribe to databases such as Griffin Investigations to identify them.

Which Portuguese gambling house, a wartime haunt of spies, is Europe's largest by capacity?

Its wartime mix of spies, exiled royals and adventurers inspired Ian Fleming's Casino Royale.

Which 1989 Las Vegas resort was the first casino to run cameras full-time on all its table games?

Older casinos had catwalks above the floor with one-way glass for surveillance staff.

What was the first full-service casino-resort on the Strip, opened in April 1941?

It opened with 63 bungalow rooms and its success spawned the Hotel Last Frontier a year later.

How many people died in the November 1980 MGM Grand fire, the worst in Las Vegas history?

The fire was caused by electrical problems; the hotel reopened eight months later.

How far outside the Las Vegas city limits was the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign built in 1959?

Strip casinos historically sat outside the city limits along Las Vegas Boulevard.

Which billionaire landlord of Caesars Palace opened the 1,512-room International Hotel in 1969?

The International, now Westgate Las Vegas, began the era of mega-resorts.

Which Las Vegas casino is cited for embedding RFID technology in its chips?

RFID tags help casinos collect data and fight counterfeiting, though fake chips are rare.

In which year was the Casino Chips & Gaming Tokens Collectors Club formed?

Some collectors value certain casino tokens at up to $100,000.