The Origins and Role of the Casino
To divine the future is human. Whether one has an effect on the outcome or nor, predicting the result of a certain event is fun. This entertainment is made even more interesting when one has to put money where their mouth is. It is safe to say that human society gambled from the beginning of every civilisation. Yet China seems to have institutionalised gambling as records dating back four millenia ago indicate, thus it can be considered the home of casinos.
Venice’s Casino di Venezia is the first casino as we moderns define the term. That is, a building where activities take place purely for gambling purposes. It is an important fact to note that Casino di Venezia stands to this date.
Most of the games played in casinos have their origins outside of these buildings. For instance, the number game we call bingo has its origin in Italy, where it was played using beans instead of paper strips hence its original name was beano.
The main aim of casinos was to provide fun ways of making money. Most of these games require a certain skill in either reading the behaviour of your other players as in Poker, or just how the machine operates as when playing slots. When the reading of behaviour pays off, there is an incoparable thrill that you feel in being right. Add to this, you are given money for this prediction.
However, we can not say that all games involve the gambler’s intuition. One form of an open casino are the horse race tracks. Here the gambler will go to see the horses try to out do each other on the trucks, which is fun in itself, while also placing money on the results he predicts. It is not always a random thing though, a horse’s or jockey’s record should tell you whether or not to place a bet, and of how much if you do.
Another platform where the casino has been provided by the Internet. There are very many games which are played on both the conventional casino and the online casino, although with few modifications that are allowed only by technology. Apart from playing with virtual machines, online casinos also offer live feeds for those who want to play in the land based casinos while away.
In conclusion, casinos play a great social function in terms of entertaining games and company, as well as financial when the players win.