People’s desire to gain fast earnings and become rich overnight is definitely not a feature of the modern man only. Looking back in history, for as long as we can find proper traces at least, it seems that gambling has its roots well established in ancient civilizations.
The earliest times when a form of gambling was recorded was around 2300 in China, where it seems that people were using tiles and dice. Dice was also discovered in Mesopotamia and Egypt around the same time. Then there’s findings of a lottery type of game called “white pigeon ticket”, around 200 BC, during the Qing Dynasty., in China. Also known as “baige piao”, “puk-a-pu”, “pukka-poo” or “pac-a-poo” it seems the game is the prequel of today’s keno games, but also the root of bingo and lottery.
The complexity of the ”white pigeon game” might surprise you. The initial tickets used were from a popular book with an unknown author, called “Book of a Thousand Characters”. As you might guess, the game itself included 1000 ideograms, which were sometimes associated to corresponding numbers up to 1000. The characters are printed from top to down, from right to left and split into 4 different blocks.
There are many stories surrounding the name of the game. Some are a bit more fantasy, while some seem realistic enough. They say sometimes white pigeons were used to transmit the name of the winners. Another version implies that the name comes from a festival taking place during the early Qing dynasty, which was the “White Pigeon Festival”, held in Guangdong. There was a pigeons race from 2 major cities, and each group of pigeon was holding a number using the characters from the famous Thousand Characters Book.
The basic play was pretty simple though, each player had to buy a ticket or more, having selected a set of idiograms from the total of 80 imprinted. The game moderator or “the bank” selects a number of winning characters, and the winners are those who have guessed the most characters according to their ticket. Bets were placed to see which pigeons’ groups would make it back safe and fast.
When the game spread further, the way the winning numbers were selected has changed along the way. To ensure fairness, a public drawing of the numbers was conducted, as reported in a Sydney newspaper from 1886 and described in Melbourne in 1876. The method involved rolling up 80 pieces of paper, each with a different character, and mixing them in a jar. The papers were then divided into four bowls, with each bowl containing 20 tickets. Next, four pieces of wood with characters engraved on them were wrapped in paper and placed randomly in the bowls. An onlooker would select one piece of paper from a set of four that matched the hidden characters on the wood pieces. Once unwrapped, the wooden pieces would reveal their characters and determine the matching bowl. Finally, the 20 winning numbers from this bowl were announced to the crowd.
Around the early 1900s, it seems that white pigeon or “Chinese lottery” was brought to America, along with Chinese immigrants. The game became popular fast among locals, which converted the popular characters to actual numbers. Later on, in 1930s, the game was added to gambling houses in Nevada.
Surprisingly enough, many games of chance from ancient times had some religious features, perhaps to keep them permitted.. The Egyptians played a game called Senet, around 2000BC, which was similar to a board game, with some deep religious connotations. There are rumors saying even King Tut was buried with 4 game boards, such big was the affiliation.
How was the game played? It involved 2 players and a board, with 10 elements called “spools” and “cones”, 4 sticks and a dice.
The Romans and the Greeks on the other hand, which were clearly great fans of gambling, were rather more focused on sports betting, as they were holding famous races and gladiator games.
Only men were allowed to gamble and there was these special places where people would meet and do so, especially soldiers. The places were also called “tabernae ludi”, similar to a pub today, where the main focus was gambling in a form or another.
When we’re talking about playing cards, we need to go back to China once again. Studies and various literary references point out that the first truly consistent games of cards have risen in China during the Tang Dynasty. There was particularly one game which was called “the leaf game”, the leaves being actually a cute name for the cards. The game appeared during the same time when actual printed paper was started to be used. Emperors were big fans too, it seems there are documents where Mu-Tsung appears to be a big fan of the game for instance.
There are many other games which can be considered the origins of today’s casino games, but we’ve focused our attention on those which seem to have been the most relevant. People’s interests have always been a mix between entertainment and money earning, historic documents are proving once again that some things never change indeed.
