Casino Trivia
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100 free Casino trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free Casino trivia questions with answers. Casinos run on mathematics and mythology in equal measure, and this quiz covers both. It ranges over the games (why the roulette zero is green, what a natural is in blackjack, where craps came from, how baccarat's three variants differ), the history (the Ridotto in Venice, Nevada in 1931, Atlantic City in 1978, the Blanc brothers' single-zero wheel), the places (Monte Carlo, Macau, the Venetian) and the people who beat the house (Edward Thorp, the MIT team, Phil Ivey), plus the movies from Casino to Ocean's Eleven. Easy questions cover things any visitor knows. Harder ones ask the house edge on double-zero roulette, where the BAR symbol came from, who is banned from Monte Carlo's gaming rooms and the odds of a perfect keno ticket. It suits a casino night, a Vegas trip or a pub quiz round. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the games, venues and films, and each question carries its source.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did the Italian word casino, from casa, originally describe?
A small villa or social club
A small villa or social club: casino means 'little house', and English borrowed it in 1744 for a public room for music and dancing; gambling took over the name only in the next century.
Q 02Which city's Great Council opened the Ridotto, the West's first government-sanctioned gambling house, in 1638?
Venice
Venice. Unable to stop its citizens gambling, the republic opened the four-storey Ridotto so that it could control the play and take a share of the money itself.
Q 03Which US state legalized casino gambling in 1931, giving America its first legal casinos?
Nevada
Nevada. With its mines failing in the Depression, the legislature legalised gambling in March 1931 to bring money back into the state; New Jersey was the next to allow casinos, in 1976.
Q 04Which city passed the Las Vegas Strip in 2006 to become the world's biggest gambling market by revenue?
Macau
Macau. Its boom began in 2002, when Stanley Ho's 40-year casino monopoly expired and rival operators, Las Vegas firms among them, were licensed; four years later it was out-earning the Strip.
Q 05What term describes the built-in margin that guarantees the casino profits in the long run?
The house edge
The house edge. The odds are set so that players lose a small share of their bets over time; poker is the exception, since players bet against each other and the house takes a fee from each pot.
Q 06What is the casino industry's nickname for its closed-circuit surveillance system?
The eye in the sky
The eye in the sky. Surveillance officers watch the ceiling cameras from a room of monitors and alert the uniformed guards on the floor the moment a player or dealer looks wrong.
Q 07Which French mathematician, legend says, invented roulette while trying to build a perpetual motion machine?
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal. The tale is a favourite, but historians trace the game itself to France in the 1700s, well after his death, where it grew out of older gambling games.
Q 08Roulette takes its name from a French word meaning what?
Little wheel
Little wheel. The game reached its present form in France in the 1790s and soon became the leading draw in gambling houses across Europe.
Q 09Which country's standard roulette wheel has two zero pockets, nearly doubling the casino's advantage to 5.26 percent?
United States
United States. American wheels kept the double zero that European casinos dropped, and since a winning number pays 35 to 1 either way, the 38th pocket lifts the casino's cut from 2.7 percent.
Q 10What colour is the zero pocket on a roulette wheel?
Green
Green. A winning number pays only 35 to 1 although the wheel has 37 or 38 pockets, so the green zero is where the casino makes its money.
Q 11What did Ashley Revell bet his entire $135,300 net worth on in a single 2004 roulette spin?
Red
Red. He had sold everything he owned, clothes included, to raise the stake, and settled on the colour only at the last minute; the spin at the Plaza in Las Vegas doubled his money.
Q 12Which writer's tale of two card cheats in Seville has them playing twenty-one, the ancestor of blackjack?
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes. In Rinconete y Cortadillo one young cheat boasts that his worn pack always cuts to an ace, a sure advantage because in twenty-one an ace counts as one or eleven.
Q 13According to popular legend, a bonus paid on a black jack with which other card gave blackjack its name?
The ace of spades
Q 21In Britain, one-armed bandits go by which name, after the symbols on their reels?
Fruit machines
Fruit machines. One-armed bandit comes from the side lever and the machines' knack for emptying pockets; Australians call theirs pokies, short for poker machines.
Q 22In which California city did the mechanic Charles Fey build the first modern slot machines in the 1890s?
San Francisco
San Francisco. His machines did so well in the city's saloons that he quit his job to open a factory, and even after they were banned at home he could not keep up with orders from elsewhere.
Q 23Craps descends from an English dice game called what?
Hazard
Hazard. The medieval game was played for ruinous stakes in English gambling rooms; its simpler American offspring took shape in the 19th century and went on to become a casino staple.
The ace of spades. The tale has a rival: an 1897 book on the Klondike gold rush lists 'black jack' among Skagway's gambling games, and card historian Thierry Depaulis credits the name to the prospectors.
Q 14Which 1962 book by Edward Thorp launched card counting into the mainstream?
Beat the Dealer
Beat the Dealer. Thorp, a mathematics professor, checked a basic strategy that four mathematicians had worked out by hand in 1956, then showed that a player who counted cards could tip the odds his own way.
Q 15Besides 'a blackjack', what is a two-card hand of an ace and a ten-value card called?
A natural
A natural. It wins at once unless the dealer has one too, and it traditionally pays one and a half times the bet where an ordinary winning hand pays even money.
Q 16In the Hi-Lo card-counting system, which cards add one to the running count when they are dealt?
2 through 6
2 through 6. Every low card that leaves the shoe makes what remains richer in tens and aces, which favour the player, so counters add one for it and subtract one for each ten, face card or ace.
Q 17Which 1988 film spread the myth that card counters memorise every card in a six-deck shoe?
Rain Man
Rain Man. Dustin Hoffman's Raymond tracks six decks in his head at Caesars Palace; real counters memorise no cards and keep only a running tally.
Q 18Which 2008 film, starring Kevin Spacey, was inspired by the MIT Blackjack Team?
21
21. The real teams split the work: a spotter counted cards at a table and signalled a partner, the big player, to wander over and bet heavily once the deck had turned in their favour.
Q 19Which fifth reel symbol, beside horseshoes, diamonds, spades and hearts, gave Charles Fey's pioneering slot machine its name?
A bell
A bell. Lining up three Liberty Bells paid the top prize, and the machine proved such a hit with saloon drinkers that rival makers were soon turning out copies of their own.
Q 20Which slot machine symbol began as a picture of a pack of chewing gum?
The BAR
The BAR. To get round anti-gambling laws, makers around 1910 passed their slot machines off as gum dispensers, and the pack of gum pictured on the reels was soon stylised into a bar.
Q 24In craps, what is a roll of two ones called?
Snake eyes
Snake eyes. The two single spots look like a pair of beady eyes, and on the first roll of a round that total, like a 3 or a 12, loses the shooter's bet on the spot.
Q 25Punto banco, chemin de fer and banque are the three popular variants of which game?
Baccarat
Baccarat. In chemin de fer the bank passes from player to player, but in punto banco, the form most casinos deal, the house keeps it and fixed drawing rules leave the players no decisions at all.
Q 26In Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, which villain does James Bond face across the card table?
Le Chiffre
Le Chiffre. In Fleming's first Bond novel he is a Soviet paymaster who has lost union funds and means to win them back at the gambling tables, so 007 is sent to bankrupt him.
Q 27Poker star Phil Ivey won $9.6 million at the Borgata in 2012 by exploiting misprinted cards with which technique?
Edge sorting
Edge sorting. The pattern on the card backs was cut unevenly, so Ivey's partner coaxed the dealer into turning the best cards around; a judge later ordered the pair to repay about $10 million.
Q 28Who is forbidden from entering the gaming rooms of the Casino de Monte-Carlo?
Citizens of Monaco
Citizens of Monaco. The tables are open only to visitors, yet locals do share in the takings: the company that runs the casino is controlled by Monaco's government and its ruling family.
Q 29Charles Garnier, who helped enlarge the Monte Carlo casino in 1878-79, was famous for designing which Paris landmark?
The Opéra
The Opéra. His concert hall on the casino's seaward side, later named the Salle Garnier, went on to become the home of Monaco's own opera company.
Q 30Resorts International, the East Coast's first legal casino, opened in May 1978 on which city's Boardwalk?
Atlantic City
Atlantic City. New Jersey voters had approved casinos there in 1976 to revive the fading resort, and Resorts won the race to open by converting an old hotel, Chalfonte-Haddon Hall.