Gambling Destinations Around The World

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• Gaming Losses Per Adult: $503 Casinos are outlawed in Hong Kong, but the world’s biggest gambling center, Macau is just an hour’s boat ride away, and in the first-quarter of 2011, half a.
• Despite the fact that gambling is fully legalized in Spain, casinos or slots are not the population’s first choice. What Spanish people are truly passionate about is sports betting, which shows in the abundance of various bookmakers. $418 of average gambling spendings a year places Spain at the bottom of our list.
• It wouldn’t be a list of the best places to visit casinos in the world without mentioning the once-barren and deserted town that became the premier destination for gambling in the USA. The Strip, as it is known, is home to all the biggest names in the gaming and casino industry like The Venetian, Mandalay Bay, Wynn Resort, Caesar Palace.

Below are some details of the best casino destinations around the world; these are all places you should try to visit if given the opportunity. Those who enjoy gambling will absolutely love these selections and even those who don’t care to gamble will find many other exciting things to do and see.For more information please contact maxbet. Costa Rica is gambling potty. This small country has more than 30 casinos, many of them in San Jose. They attract savvy American tourists who come to spend less, but get that same Vegas high. For a minimum spend of 60p ($1 in local currency) you’ll get free drinks while playing in most of the nation’s casinos.

The history of humanity is inextricably linked with the history of gambling, as it seems that no matter how far back in time you go there are signs that where groups of people gathered together gambling was sure to have been taking place. Now we are not going to attempt to track every single twist and turn in the evolution of gambling in this article, but what we are going to do is to pick out some of the most important dates to act as milestones on the road to today’s gambling experience.

The Earliest Evidence of Gambling

While it is almost certain that some forms of betting have been taking place since the dawn of human history, the earliest concrete evidence comes from Ancient China where tiles were unearthed which appeared to have been used for a rudimentary game of chance. The Chinese ‘Book of Songs’ makes reference to “the drawing of wood” which suggests that the tiles may have formed part of a lottery type game. We have evidence in the form of keno slips which were used in about 200bc as some sort of lottery to fund state works – possibly including construction of the Great Wall of China. Lotteries continued to be used for civic purposes throughout history – Harvard and Yale were both established using lottery funds – and continue to do so until the present day.

Dicing with the Law on the Streets of Ancient Rome

The Greek poet Sophocles claimed that dice were invented by a mythological hero during the siege of Troy, and while this may have somewhat dubious basis in fact, his writings around 500bc were the first mention of dice in Greek history. We know that dice existed far earlier than this, since a pair had been uncovered from an Egyptian tomb from 3000bc, but what is certain is that the Ancient Greeks and Romans loved to gamble on all manner of things, seemingly at any given opportunity. In fact all forms of gambling – including dice games – were forbidden within the ancient city of Rome and a penalty imposed on those caught which was worth four times the stake being bet. As a result of this, ingenious Roman citizens invented the first gambling chips, so if they were nabbed by the guards they could claim to be playing only for chips and not for real money. (Note that this ruse will not work if attempted at a Vegas casino).

Playing your Cards Right in China

Most scholars agree that the first playing cards appeared in China in the 9th century, although the exact rules of the games they were used for have been lost to history. Some suggest that the cards were both the game and the stake, like trading card games played by children today, while other sources believe the first packs of cards to have been paper forms of Chinese domino. Certainly the cards used at this time bore very little relation to the standard 52 card decks we know today.

Baccarat in Italy and France

The earliest game still played in casinos today is the two player card game of Baccarat, a version of which was first mentioned as long ago as the 1400s when it migrated from Italy to France. Despite its early genesis, it took hundreds of years and various evolutions to arrive at the game we know today. Although different incarnations of the game have come and gone, the standard version played in casinos all over the world came from Cuba via Britain to the US, with a few alterations to the rules along the way. Although baccarat is effectively more of a spectator sport than a game, it is a feature of just about every casino due to its popularity with high rolling gamblers.

Blackjack through the Ages

Some suggest that the earliest forms of blackjack came from a Spanish game called ventiuna (21) as this game appeared in a book written by the author of Don Quixote in 1601. Or was it the game of trente-un (31) from 1570? Or even quinze (15) from France decades earlier? As with all of these origin stories, the inventors of games of chance were rarely noted in the historical annals. The French game of vingt-et-un in the seventeenth century is certainly a direct forefather of the modern game, and this is the game that arrived in the US along with early settlers from France. The name ‘blackjack’ was an American innovation, and linked to special promotions in Nevada casinos in the 1930s. To attract extra customers, 10 to 1 odds were paid out if the player won with a black Jack of Clubs or Spades together with an Ace of Spades. The special odds didn’t last long, but the name is still with us today.

First Casinos in Italy

The earliest gambling houses which could reasonably be compared to casinos started to appear in the early 17th century in Italy. For example, in 1638, the Ridotto was established in Venice to provide a controlled gambling environment amidst the chaos of the annual carnival season. Casinos started to spring up all over continental Europe during the 19th century, while at the same time in the US much more informal gambling houses were in vogue. In fact steam boats taking prosperous farmers and traders up and down the Mississippi provided the venue for a lot of informal gambling stateside. Now when we think of casinos we tend to picture the Las Vegas Strip, which grew out of the ashes of the Depression in America.

The Little Wheel in Paris

Roulette as we know it today originated in the gaming houses of Paris, where players would have been familiar with the wheel we now refer to (ironically enough) as the American Roulette wheel. It took another 50 years until the ‘European’ version came along with just one green zero, and generations of roulette players can be grateful for that. During the course of the 19th century roulette grew in popularity, and when the famous Monte Carlo casino adopted the single zero form of the game this spread throughout Europe and most of the world, although the Americans stuck to the original double zero wheels.

Poker: Bust to Boom

It’s hard to pin down the precise origin of poker – as with a lot of the games mentioned here, poker seems to have grown organically over decades and possibly centuries from various different card games. Some have poker’s antecedents coming from seventeenth century Persia, while others say that the game we know today was inspired by a French game called Poque. What we do know for sure is that an English actor by the name of Joseph Crowell reported that a recognizable form of the game was being played in New Orleans in 1829, so that is as good a date as any for the birth of poker. The growth of the game’s popularity was fairly sluggish up until world poker tournaments started being played in Vegas in the 1970s. However poker really exploded with the advent of online poker and televised events allowing spectators to see the players’ hands. When amateur player Chris Moneymaker qualified for and won the 2003 world poker championship after qualifying through online play, it allowed everyone to picture themselves as online poker millionaires.

One Armed Bandits Appear in New York

The first gambling machine which resembled the slots we know today was one developed by Messrs Sittman and Pitt in New York, which used the 52 cards on drum reels to make a sort of poker game. Around the same time the Liberty Bell machine was invented by a Charles Fey in San Francisco. This machine proved much more practical in the sense that winnings could be precisely regulated, and marked the beginning of the real slot game revolution. The fact that some new video slot games still feature bell symbols dates back to this early invention. While early machines spewed out cigars and gum instead of money, the money dispensing versions soon became a staple in bars and casinos around the globe, and when the first video slot was invented in 1976 this paved the way for the online video slots which were to follow.

Gambling in the US: Two Sides of the Same Coin

The United States has always had an up and down relationship with gambling, dating back to when the very first European settlers arrived. Whereas Puritan bands of settlers banned gambling outright in their new settlements, those emigrating from England had a more lenient view of gambling and were more than happy to tolerate it. This dichotomous relationship has continued until now, and in 1910 public pressure led to a nationwide prohibition on gambling. Just like the alcohol prohibition of the same era, this proved somewhat difficult to enforce and gambling continued on in an only slightly discreet manner. The Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression that this spawned in the early 1930s led to gambling being legalized again, as for many this was the only prospect of alleviating the grinding poverty which they suffered through. Although gambling is legal in a number of States today –most famously in Las Vegas, Nevada - online gambling is still something of a grey area in the United States. Right now, many international internet casinos are unable to accept American clients, although the signs are that this will change in the near future.

The New Frontier for Gambling

Microgaming is one of the largest casino and slot game developers in the world today, and they are also considered to be pioneers of online gambling. The leap into the world of virtual casinos was taken all the way back in 1994, which in internet terms is kind of like 2300bc! Online gaming was worth over a billion dollars within 5 years, and today is a multibillion dollar industry with over a thousand online casinos and growing. The first live dealer casinos appeared in 2003 courtesy of Playtech, bringing us closer to a hybrid between brick and mortar casinos and the virtual world.

Gambling Has Gone Mobile

Since New Jersey legalized online gambling in 2011, there has been a boom in the interest people have in it. America has seen a move towards legalizing it state by state, as well as experiencing the rapid rise in mobile gambling. Across the globe, internet users are gradually veering away from their desktops and towards their handheld devices. This is true of online gamblers too, wanting to be able to enjoy their favorite games whilst on the go. The top gambling sites out there have recognized a market and have stepped up to deliver. With a wave of impressive mobile focused online gambling destinations taking the world by storm, it's safe to say that desktops are being left far behind in favour of more mobile alternatives.

…The Future

What Comes Next?

It is just about as difficult to predict the future for gambling as it is to uncover some of the origins of the gambling games we know so well today. Much of the focus at the moment is on the mobile gaming market, with online casinos scrambling to make more content compatible with the latest hand held devices. Virtual reality technology is just taking its first steps as a commercial proposition, and you can be sure that there will be gambling applications down the road. How would you like to sit around a virtual poker table with a bunch of your friends from all over the world, share a few laughs, try to tell if you can spot a tell-tale facial tick; and all this from the comfort of your home? VR Headsets can make it happen – maybe not today, but certainly just a few years down the track if technology continues to advance in bounds and leaps.

And after that? Well who knows, but when it comes to gambling all things are possible.

Gambling Destinations Around The World Location

References

• Dice: Game Pieces (Britannica.com)
• Baccarat (card game) (Wikipedia.org)
• Twenty-One (card game) (Wikipedia.org)
• How Casinos Work (HowStuffWorks.com)
• Where Did Poker Originate? (History.com)
• History Of Poker (Wopc.co.uk)
• Chris Moneymaker (Wikipedia.org)
• Historical Interlude (VideoGameHistorian.com)
• Charles Fey and San Francieco's Liberty Bell Slot Machine (California Historical Quarterly)
• Microgaming: About Us (Microgaming.co.uk)
• New Jersey Now Allows Gambling via Internet (NYTimes.com)

Though airfare has certainly increased the past several years there are generally more flights per destination than ever. And with airlines and hoteliers competing online there are still affordable ways for the mobile gambler to get out and test the waters at some of the more popular casinos in the world.

In this post we are going to introduce seven of the best gambling and casino destinations in the world. Some of these you may be well aware of. Others perhaps less so. Hopefully you will find at least one location you will consider worth putting some coin aside for and visiting soon as possible.

There are over 1500 casinos in the United States alone. To put this into some perspective there are roughly as many casinos in the US as there are in the rest of the world combined. We have chosen two American destinations for our list that likely don’t come at any surprise. Outside the US gaming is expanding rapidly. We introduce two Asian locations, both of which have risen within the past decade to dominate global casino revenues.

1. Las Vegas

First off at the top of the list is the world’s de facto gambler Mecca, otherwise known as the “city of lights” and, of course, “sin city”. Each year, Las Vegas Strip casinos take in over $6 Billion, $118 Million of which from poker alone. If you went last year you would have been one of the over 42.3 Million to have taken in the lights and sights of the world’s most celebrated gaming industry. What makes that figure more impressive is the fact that, outside of conventions, there really is no other reason for visiting Las Vegas than the Strip.

And gaming is not the only thing on tap. The intense competition for gambling dollars has created immense investment by casinos in entertainment attractions, each outdoing the other in lavishness and spectacle. Las Vegas is synonymous with its glamorous showgirls and entertainers like the Rat Pack and Wayne Newton, spectacular fountains, pyramids and a replica of the Eiffel Tower. Recently, Cirque du Soleil has established a permanent presence and can be seen year-round, performing their peerless brand of gymnastics that can take your breath away.

However, should you find yourself looking for diversions from the gaming tables or your funds are getting low, Las Vegas is not without options. If you weigh over 350 pounds you may eat for free at the Heart Attack Grill restaurant. Be sure to inquire about their triple deck cheese and bacon burger! Elsewhere, you can fire off a grenade launcher, twice, for $40. And there is a heavy-equipment playground where you can drive bulldozers.

2. Macau (also spelt Macao)

Located next to Hong Kong on the western side of the Pearl River Delta, Macau was a colony of the Portuguese Empire until it was returned over to China in 1999. Though officially under Chinese rule, Macau has retained a high degree of autonomy and has used it to established itself as one of the world’s richest cities.

In 2006, Macau became the world’s largest gaming center, with 2015 gaming revenue reaching over $28.3 Billion. You won’t have to worry about find a game, as Macau casinos contain in total nearly 6000 gaming tables.

Though the US gaming industry remains atop casino gambling revenues by country, Macau is the home of the eight most lucrative gaming houses worldwide. Number one on that list is the Galaxy Macau, with a 2014 revenue of US$5.85 Billion, almost as much as the entire Las Vegas Strip combined!

Near the equator, Macau’s climate is temperate, with a yearly average of 72 °F. If you like the heat and don’t mind the humidity Macau’s summer temperatures routinely reach over 80 °F. If that is too for you then January temperatures average a much more manageable 58 °F. Whichever you prefer the Macau’s tourist infrastructure is fully modern so you can expect your stay to be comfortable.

3. Atlantic City

The United State’s other famous gambling destination is Atlantic City, and is perhaps a more reclined counterpart to the glitz and glamour of the Las Vegas Strip. A small resort town with a population of 39 000, Atlantic City has charm to spare with its casinos, oceanside beaches and of course, the world famous Boardwalk.

There are eight casinos in Atlantic City. The largest and newest is the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa, with 3153 slot machines and 263 gaming tables. The Borgata also claims to have the winningest slots in the both the Atlantic City and Pennsylvania gaming markets.

A true tourist destination, Atlantic City proves it is not just about the gambling. The Atlantic City area is home to seven of the state’s top ten ranked golf courses and is among the top three world-class venues for hosting marquee boxing events. And of course there is the aforementioned Boardwalk. Built in 1870, the Atlantic City Boardwalk is ranked by National Geographic as the best in the US.

4. Monte Carlo

The history and legend of the Monte Carlo casino speaks for itself. Perched on the shores of the Mediterranean, the Monte Carlo remains peerless in its reputation for sophistication and luxurious gaming.

While the casino has retained its rich decour that has made it so famous it has sought to keep up with technological advances in the gaming industry. As such, you are able to play slot machines both classic and modern. In its gaming suites, Monte Carlo offers European, and English, Roulettes, Trente et Quarante, Black Jack, and the universally popular Texas Hold’em Poker.

While most casinos are closed and cavernous environments where gamblers are encouraged to lose track of time and the outside world, the summertime Salle Blanche & Terrasse offers table play with its matchless view over the Riviera.

Outside the casino, Monte Carlo offers a wide variety of events and activities. Festivals occur year-round. Day and night tours provide you with expert guides. One favorite is a short (one half hour) or day long tour with a professional driver and Lamborghini.

Gambling Destinations Around The World Countries

5. Baden-Baden

Located in the German Rhineland and just north of the university city of Heidelberg, Baden-Baden is special for those attracted to old-world opulence. The history of the town is very old, used over millennia for its special healing mineral spas.

The ornate casino was established over 200 years ago and designed as a French palace, with large chandeliers, gold details and lush, red velvet drapes. Its heyday may have been in the 19^th century when it was popular with European nobility and elite classes from around the world. Currently, while still providing the richness of its heritage, you will find over 100 slots and two dozen gaming tables offering Black Jack, Poker, Roulette and Baccarat.

Situated in the Rebland Wine Region and near the Black Forest National Park, Baden-Baden offers quality dining, shopping districts.

6. Singapore

Opened in 2010, Singapore’s two casinos ranks it fourth in world-wide gaming revenues, between Canada and Australia. The Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa round out the top ten casinos in the world, with 2015 revenues of US$2.57 and US$1.76 respectively.

The largest of the two, the Marina Bay Sands, with its iconic and immediately recognizable three-towers motif, asserts itself on the Singaporean Marina Bay skyline. The Sands offers 160 000 square feet of space, filled with 700 tables and 2500 machines over four floors and 24 hour access, with dress code.

Fully modernized, and alongside the traditional gaming tables and slots, the Sands offers Rapid Table Games, with touch screens and computerized waging that offer Baccarat, Roulette and Sic-Bo. Note to poker players: other than Singapore Stud, poker is not available at the Sands. The Sands also offers the famous 3 acre Avalon Sands Skypark.

The smaller of the two in size, the Resorts World Casino Sentosa still provides almost as many tables and machines as the Sands. The Sentosa can also be somewhat pricier, with rooms up to $1200.

Once a Dutch colony, the trade-routes port maintains its rich cultural background in its main historic districts of Little India, Arab Street, Chinatown and Orchard Road. The ArtScience Museum is over 49000 square feet and hosts exhibits that merge science and technology with art and design.

7. Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls has two casinos. The Casino Niagara, the first permanent casino to open in the province of Ontario, offers 95 000 square feet of floor space spread out over two stories, which includes 1500 slots machines and 45 gaming tables – including 12 poker tables – and sports betting. The Niagara also offers weekly live entertainment, a comedy club and several venues for dining and drinks.

The Fallsview Casino Resort is an impressive, $1 Billion complex, adding its prominence to the Niagara skyline in 2004. The Fallsview boasts 200 000 square feet of gaming space, including over 100 gaming tables and over 3000 slots.

The Fallsview has a premiere reputation for world-calibre live acts, a luxury hotel and spa facilities, brand name shopping and exquisite dining. And, as its name suggests, the Fallsview offers a wonderful window upon the magnificence of the Horseshoe Falls. The Fallsview hotel contains 374 rooms alongside a spa area of 15 000 square feet.

Niagara Falls’ attractions include Queen Victoria Park, The Maid of the Mist tour (which takes you behind the Falls), Skylon Tower and Pavilion with revolving restaurant and observation deck overlooking the Falls, a Butterfly Conservatory, Wax Museums and Marine Land. The Niagara area also continues to establish its reputation as a world-class golf destination.

Long known as the Honeymoon Capital of the World, Niagara Falls has been a favorite destination of newlyweds for generations. With its world-class casino and gaming facilities it is a fun-filled destination for couples who share an enthusiasm for gaming.

Gambling Destinations Around The World Europe

Conclusion

Gambling Destinations Around The World Countries

The global casino and gaming industry and culture is currently booming and there are many world-class venues and locations to choose from, depending on your tastes and interests. Gaming revenues provide enormous tax benefits for the host governments. This importance to local economies has brought ruling powers on board with the industry, creating a standardization the world over. This standardization seeks to ensure that gaming centers as diverse as Macau or Niagara Falls develop and maintain reputations for providing gaming tourists with nothing less than a fantastic experience.

Which ever venue catches your attention, I hope this list has provided a few ideas for where to go for your next gaming adventure.

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