If you’re an avid gamer, you’ve probably wondered about the history of gambling game tools. While you might be surprised to learn that most gamblers set a monetary limit when playing a game, most do go over it, and excessive gambling is a significant antecedent of problematic gambling. Responsible gambling tools may help individuals to gamble within their means, but the effectiveness of such tools has only been studied in isolation. In this study, participants watched an educational animation about the history and operation of an EGM. Next, they played the game in a virtual reality environment. Each participant was asked to set a monetary limit for their play, and half were reminded when they exceeded it.
The earliest forms of gambling were based on divinatory practices, and gambling tools developed from the items that humans used for rituals. Stones, bones, and sticks were used by primitive man for gambling. Throughout history, people have used these tools to bet on various outcomes of different events, and the use of them has been documented in many ancient texts. The evolution of the game tools led to the development of civilization, including gambling.
The history of gambling can be traced back to the ancient Middle East and can be found in tombs, Roman laws, Jewish Talmud, Islam, and Buddhism. Early Egyptians punished gamblers by making them work in quarries. Originally, the idea of gambling involved interpreting patterns of objects that lay on the ground. The ancient Egyptians even sent their gamblers to a penal colony in a quarry if they lost a game.
While some of these tools are still used today, others are based on empirical research. Blaszczynski et al. have proposed implementing empirically tested gambling tools that can be implemented in a gambling game. For example, an interactive roulette wheel can be programmed to display a pop-up message that reminds players of their monetary limits and the number of available coins. The pop-up message can replace the educational animation.
Playing cards were invented in China in the 800s and were used to play games. These games soon spread throughout the world, resulting in gambling palaces in Italy and France. Before the invention of playing cards, there were other games that involved dice, including chess and checkers. These games were brought to Europe by knights returning from the Crusades, and eventually developed into the modern casino table game, Craps.
