Here at
Aces Casino, the company widely recognized as the top
orange county casino party company in southern California, we tend to get a lot of inquisitive clients that ask a LOT of GREAT questions concerning the
casino party
industry in general, and certain casino-based games in particular.
Heck, where do you think we get most of our material for our
informatively irreverent
Aces Casino Blog?
(Ed. Note: Can you tell that we love our clients?)
Recently, our
Aces Casino
team had an event out at the campus of the University of Southern
California (U.S.C., for short), where we ran into some very intelligent
and VERY inquisitive students from the fraternity of Lambda Chi Alpha.
Curiosity and intelligence run rampant here as well at the
orange county casino night leaders known as
Aces Casino,
so the inquiries from USC got us thinking -- Maybe it's time to share
some information as to just where some of our favorite casino games came
to be. POOF! Blog article!
So, courtesy of the top
orange county casino party company in SoCal, and because last week's "Aces College" post was so well received, we're going back-to-back with our popular "Aces College of Casino Game Knowledge" series with some more amazing, amusing and confusing historical facts about the
Aces Casino Entertainment "Big Three" games supplied by our company on a regular basis -- Craps, Roulette and Blackjack!
#1 -- The History Of CRAPS
When we started out
on our journey for information about the history of the game of Craps,
we discovered that some form of dice throwing has been used
for many purposes throughout time. As some ancient culture followed
stars and astrology, runes, bones and dice were also used by tribal
shamans and fortune tellers to read the future for commoners and
leaders.
Overlapping with this mystical use of dice is the gaming
history involving chance tosses of dice to win against opponents. Some
craps historians date the origins of dice games well into the ancient
world, where Koreans, Egyptians and Roman Emperors like Caesar Augustus,
Nero and Caligula all purportedly engaged in various dice games, even
learning to cheat opponents in the games. The idea of tempting the fates
by throwing dice as a chance to win seems to blend these two ideologies
of mysticism and gaming into a common experience.
Historical records trace more specific dice games at least as far
back as ancient Egypt in 1573 BC. In this era, the game known as Theban
dice was one of the earliest games of chance in the world. Archeologists
have found one pair of ancient Egyptian dice dating back to this era.
Whether this is direct predecessor to modern craps is unknown.
Other craps historians date the game to the days of the Holy Roman
Empire. Roman legionary soldiers commonly took pigs’ knuckles, shaved
and squared them down into cubes, which they tossed into their upturned
shields as dice games, to wager for condemned prisoners’ effects or to
pass the time. From this variation of dice tossing, the term “to roll
the bones” developed. Since soldier’s pay was poor compensation, a
simple game like this was an easy pleasure.
A third
potential origin for modern craps comes from an Arabic game,
which was popular to play in the Middle Ages. The game was called
azzahr, from the Arabic words “al zar” or “azzah,” which simply means
“dice.” It is this Arabic origin that weaves together with the history
of the long-popular English game, Hazard. Three different claims to
historical Craps fame, but we're siding with the Egyptians, here. Dice
inside Tut's tomb = winner, as far as this
orange county casino party company is concerned.
Doesn't look like King Tut to me, but I might be wrong there.
#2 -- The History of ROULETTE
Whoa....Roulette history about its origin cannot
be confirmed nor ascertained in any of the recorded data. Most of the
people believe that this chance game is based on the games played by the
Romans (Ed. Note: Wow, THERE'S a surprise) as an amusement with chariots and spinning wheels that were used
to develop game of roulette. Chinese also have the versions regarding
the game. Yeah, I'm guessing they're called "Tough to Beat."
Most of the people claim that the
European traders have brought the game from China to Europe. The game
was generally to arrange the 37 animal statuettes in the magical square
which totals 666. But many claimed the fact that this version did not
explain the method to play the game in the roulette history. While you
add up the numbers from 1-36 the roulette numbers must come to 666. (First the Romans, now, the Devil.)
The
most current Roulette mechanism was invented by the
great mathematician and scientist Blaise Pascal who is father of
probability and is noted in the roulette history. This happened while he
was working on perpetual motion device. This led to the beginning for
the modern roulette games. Blaise should have told us right up front
that this game can't be beaten! Math whizzes -- They're ALWAYS keeping
the secrets of these games a secret.
Roly-poly is described in the roulette
history and is precursor of the roulette games of today. Even Odd was
considered as the simplest version of the
online casino Australia
roly-poly game. Modern roulette wheels were available in the casinos of
Paris about 50 years later. It generally consisted of colors black and
red, even and odd number bets, the numbers from 1-36, 00 and 0. The
rules regarding the game are depicted in roulette history and it tells
the fact that 0 stands for red and 00 stands for black. Umm, not HERE,
they don't. I'm guessing VEGAS came up with THAT. Probably Frank
Rosenthal, but don't hold me to that.
Heck, I can't even bet my lucky number, "14," on THIS wheel. Something's fishy.
#3 -- The History of BLACKJACK
OK, before we print this, it's your job to guess what country is credited with creating this staple of our
orange county casino party gaming system. Go ahead, we'll wait.....
OK, time's up. If you guessed Spain, give yourself one point.
Blackjack's precursor was twenty-one,
a game of unknown origin. The first written reference is found in a
book by the Spanish author Miguel De Cervantes, who is most famous for
writing Don Quixote. Cervantes was a gambler, and the main characters of his tale Rinconete y Cortadillo are
a couple of cheats working in the city of Seville. They are proficient
at cheating at ventiuna (Spanish for twenty-one), and state that the
object of the game is to reach 21 points without going over and that the
“ace” values 1 or 11. The game is played with a Spanish deck which
lacks eights, nines and tens. This short story was written between 1601
and 1602, implying that ventiuna was played in the city of Castilla
since the beginning of the 17th Century or earlier. Later references to
this game are found in France and Spain. Great, a bunch of cheaters did
the deed on this game. Figures.
It appears that the origin of CHEATING goes back a long way, also.
Well, that's all from the desk of the
Aces Casino Blog. We'll be back on Thursday with another scintillating effort concerning the top
orange county casino night party company in southern California. Have a good week, and we'll see you then!
