Crazy Facts About Casinos and Gambling

Card Counting is Legal

Card counting, which involves keeping track of which cards have been dealt and which remain in the deck, is legal. Movies like Rain Man and 21 make card counting seem like wizardry, but it’s actually fairly simple arithmetic. That hasn’t stopped casinos around the world from stopping card counting, however, especially if the player is less-than-subtle in their approach (actor Ben Affleck, for example, was banned from a casino in 2014 for his trickery). Besides asking players to leave, casinos also combat it by changing the rules or shuffling the deck more often.

The Sandwich Was Invented in a Casino

In 1765, John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich and gambler, didn’t want to leave the gaming table to eat. Instead, Montagu told his servants to bring him meat between sliced bread so he could eat and play at the same time. Thus the “sandwich” was born… sort of.

In reality, the Earl wasn’t much of a gambler, but he did enjoy his namesake meal. The legend came from a French travel guide about London and is the only source of the gambling tale. The story caught on, however, and soon people throughout Europe were craving sandwiches. Montagu didn’t invent the meal – it’s meat between bread, after all; people had likely been eating this combo for centuries, but he did give it a name and a cool story.

The First Slot Machine Wasn’t Even in a Casino

When mechanic Charles Fey invented the first slot machine in 1895, it wasn’t played in a casino. Fey’s “Liberty Bell” machine was actually at his auto shop in San Francisco for customers to play while they waited for their cars to be fixed. It became so popular that casinos bought them to give gamblers something to do when table games were occupied.

You Can Voluntarily Ban Yourself from a Casino

If your addiction to gambling is getting out of control, several states allow you to ban yourself from casinos, making it a crime to step foot on the gaming floor. Ohio, for example, has a so-called “Voluntary Exclusion” program for gamblers looking to kick the habit that allows them to ban themselves for either a year, five years, or life. If you choose the lifetime ban you better mean it: there is no way to get your name off the list once you commit to quitting for good.

“Craps” Comes from “Crabs”

Many people wonder why the popular casino dice game Craps is called Craps. It’s a simple equation: language + time = bonkers. Historians think it all started with an old British dice game called Hazard (such a better name). In Hazard, rolling “snake eyes” was called rolling “crabs.” French settlers in New Orleans in the mid-1700s kept Hazard alive, but over time, the combination of French and English-speaking players and changes to the game’s rules slowly turned “crabs” into “craps” (for some reason) and a whole new game was born, eventually leaving Hazard nothing but a distant memory. Viva le Craps!

About Crescent Schools

Looking for a fun and exciting career? Crescent School of Gaming and Bartending can train you for a dynamic, well-paying job in the hospitality or casino industry today.

You can be ready to bartend in just three weeks. Be around fun people and have cash in your pocket every night as a mixologist, or claim your place in the ever-growing casino gaming industry in as little as three months. Financial aid is available, if qualified. You can start one of Crescent's top-quality programs with no money down.

Crescent is an accredited bartending and table games dealer school in the United States.