Gambling potpourri

5 August 2017

By John Marchel

In English, “potpourri” is often used to refer to any collection of diverse items. It’s a kind of collection of miscellaneous literary extracts. In this case, we have a collection of gambling trivia that includes facts, events and oddities that do not fit into any specific category.

The dictionary tells us that gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods. Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize.

What potpourri we have here does not always fit into one of those three elements, but do seem to be related to the topic in general.

BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

• William Howard Taft was the first President to visit Las Vegas. In 1911, he waved to the Las Vegas citizens from his railroad car as his train passed through town.

• It’s been documented that solitaire is the most widely played game around the world.

• In 1752, Benjamin Franklin used paper disks cut from playing cards in the construction of his equipment for making electrical experiments.

• In 1850, New York City was one of the primary gambling centers in the country, with no fewer than 6,000 gaming establishments.

• Gambling generates more revenue than movies, spectator sports, theme parks, cruise ships and recorded music combined.

• Cockfighting was so popular in England that King Henry VIII (1491-1547) installed a cock-pit in the royal palace at Whitehall.

• In the 1700s, U.S. newspapers regularly published the odds on local cockfighting matches.

• All racehorses have the same birthday regardless of when they were born. On 1 January, every racehorse gets one year older.

• Horse and dog racing are legal in Nevada, but there are no horse or dog tracks within the state.

• Under U.S. law, gambling ships must be outside the three-mile limit on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. However, they must be beyond the nine-mile limit in the Gulf of Mexico.

• In Iowa, 91% of the casino business comes from slots. In Illinois, it’s 84%; 65% in Nevada; and 73% in New Jersey. In Delaware, 100% of all gambling income comes from slots and the lottery.

• Australians are the Western world’s biggest gamblers, spending over $2,000 a year per head of population. A close second are Americans, at $1,800 per head.

• Aristotle, Greek philosopher and teacher of Alexander the Great, once wrote a scholarly essay on how to cheat at dice.

• Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. president, was known to be a penny ante poker player and billiard player. During his years in Illinois (in the 1850s), he was frequently a judge at cockfights. That was where he got his nickname “Honest Abe.”

• American soldiers in the Revolution would flatten musket shot into cubes and use their bayonets to mark spots on them so they could use them as dice.