Casino Gambling For Dummies. Swain Scheps

Introduction

      At the moment Julius Caesar and his army crossed the little stream known as the Rubicon in Northern Italy, he became a capital criminal back in Rome. To preserve the Republic, no General was allowed to bring troops into the capital, but Caesar suspected he would be welcomed by the Senate and people rather than executed.

      You might think the words he uttered at that pivotal moment would be exhortations to the gods or pleas to the Senate about his patriotism and intentions. Instead, he simply said, “Alea acta est” — the die is cast. Caesar had pushed all his chips on the 7 and sent the dice flying in hopes of a lucky roll. His fate, and that of history itself, hinged on what number turned up.

      It shouldn’t surprise us that Caesar alluded to a dice game. Gambling was already an ancient form of entertainment. In fact, we’ve been gambling since the beginning. Nearly every major ancient civilization — from the Chinese to the Babylonians, from the Greeks to the Incas — played games of chance. You might say it’s written into our DNA as humans.

      And there’s more to it than entertainment. Gambling has advanced philosophy, economics, and of course, mathematics. About the time Vesalius revealed the workings of the human body and Copernicus demoted the Earth from its status as center of the universe, their lesser-known high school classmate Girolamo Cardano released a seminal tome on gambling that laid down principles on statistics and probability. This work — as much as any other in the Renaissance — helped launch the world toward modernity. (And no, these guys weren’t actually high school classmates.)

      Gambling has always been a democratic pastime. It brings people together, just as it does to this day. Dice and cards don’t care about your class, your status, or your wealth. In fact, gambling helped launch democracy when 13 restless colonies helped fund their revolution and their new nation through government-run lotteries.

So, when you step into a casino, you’re doing something essentially human. You’re joining a long line of people that stretches around the world and back into the mists of time. They knew that putting some small piece of your livelihood in the hands of fate confirms we’re alive. They saw that the ups and downs of a game are like miniature rehearsals for life itself. When you try your luck, you open a peephole into the machinery of the universe, hoping to get a sign of what it has in store for us. You’ve bought this book and joined a long tradition. You’re already a gambler. Let’s see what happens next. Alea acta est.

Casinos and Gamblers

      Whether we’re talking about casinos, horse races, sports bets, lottery scratch-off tickets, or even church bingo night, gambling is a legitimate and accepted form of entertainment. But, as popular as it is the world over, it’s not a path to riches, and it’s not without its risks.

      Here’s why: The folks who run the casinos are professionals who are astute business people with a successful formula for profit. They have the technology and resources to conduct research and development on how to take advantage of human desire and

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