Historical Origins
Part II
Let’s Look at Cricket
Fighting
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In the first half of the second century,
AD, bones, dice, and other games of
gambling would give way in popularity to a
new revolutionary form of gambling . . .
Cards
The whereabouts of cards and who actually
invented them remains a subject of debate
with varying theories with respect
to
origination, let’s look at two common held
theories.
Enter Cards
Korean
Hypothesis
The anthropologist Steward Culin, who
is devoted to studying Asian and
American Indian games, concluded that
playing cards (6th century) descended
from Korean divinatory arrows.
He hypothesized this because of the
similarity of divinatory arrows and due
to the their name “htou-tjyen”, meaning
“fighting tablets,”
Most Korean packs of cards had eight
suits of ten cards each; the suits were
man, fish, crow, pheasant, antelope,
star, rabbit, and horse.
Korean Playing Cards
The cards were made from oiled silk and were
approximately eight inches long and one half inch
wide.
Chinese Hypothesis:
Card =Shen or Fan
The Chinese have not acknowledged this cultural
adaptation and legend holds that dotted cards were
played as far back as the 12 century AD in China.
Supposedly cards arose as a game to occupy the
emperor’s ladies of the house, all 1500 hundred of
them.
Other hypothesis about card creation site India as
the birthplace of cards.
History of Cards: Historians Disagree
Cards A Rampant Explosion
It is likely that idea of gambling with cards filtered
westward from China.
Leaving each culture free to develop its own
kinds of games.
From Italy to England
One theory holds, that cards spread via Venetian trade
routes.
Early Italian decks had 52 cards, but the first, hand painted
cards were extremely expensive (hundreds of dollars in
today’s terms)
However, as the European Renaissance took hold along
with the advent of block printing the price of a deck cards was
minimized…
By the late 1400’s card playing was set to became a world
wide obsession.
Rise of the Modern Deck
Credited with ushering in the
modern playing deck are the
French.
French playing card design
jelled around 1480. The
design here is from the
1500s.
Although there has been
some general appearance
modifications, French suit
signs are immediately
recognizable.
Rise of the Modern
Deck
Their piques – spades
Their trefles – clubs
Their coeurs – hearts, and;
Their carreaux – are diamonds.
Rise of the Modern Deck
According to legend, Spanish
voyagers brought cards to the
New world during Columbus’s
1492 transatlantic journey.
But dropped them overboard
believing that divine anger would
doom their ships.
Spanish playing cards would
eventually filter northward during
and after colonial possession.
And in years to come, English
colonist’s would further add to
the spawning of a new gambling
nation.
Taming Tyche and Probability theory
Cicero wrote “a
man who tossed a
Venus throw twice
in a row was the
beneficiary of luck
rather than the
personal
intervention of the
goddess”...
The Book on Games of Chance
Enter Girolama
Cardano
Girolama Cardano
Physician, Mathematician,
Gambler
Stated: “Before agreeing to
stakes one must consider the
total # of outcomes and compare
the number of casts that would
produce a favourable outcome to
those that are unfavourable”
Computed odds on the cast of
one, two, three dice - paving the
way toward the adoption of the
house advantage.
Toward Mercantile /
Professional
Gambling
Thus, if a gambling house
agrees to pay a customer who
bets one dollar at odds of 200 to
one if he/she throws three
aces...
...Considering it takes an
average of 216 throws to do it
the house stands to make a
profit of sixteen dollars on each
customer
Here then we have the divide
between actual probability of
various outcomes and payouts
offered to customer
$ HOUSE EDGE
$
Probability (c0nt.)
Stimulated by de Méré’s
question, Pascal began a now
famous chain of correspondence
with fellow mathematician
Pierre de Fermat.
Together they worked out the
problem of odds in various
gambling games.
For instance, I know I have a
50% percent chance of flipping
a head (on a fair coin). But
what is the likelihood of
flipping four consecutive heads?
Blaise Pascal
Pierre de Fermat
1 out of 16 chances
Blaise Pascal
In other words there are 16 total combinations of coin flips
•In only one combination are all heads
•In four ways there are three heads and one tails
•And in six ways heads and tails are dead even
Pierre de Fermat
• Who wants to bet?
Lottery Example
Toward mercantile Gambling
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Monte Carlo Fallacy
•
•
•
In the summer of 1913, a roulette ball fell
in the black 26 times in a row, an
extremely uncommon occurrence (but no
more or less common than any of the
other 67,108,863 sequences of 26 balls,
neglecting the 0 or 00 spots on the
wheel), and gamblers lost millions of
francs betting against black after the
black streak happened.
Gamblers reasoned incorrectly that the
streak was causing an "imbalance" in the
randomness of the wheel, and that it had
to be followed by a long streak of red
Some gamblers believe that previous
failures indicate an increased probability
of success on subsequent attempts
Probability theory spawned considerable
mathematic progress, but it did not have
an immediate impact on the society of
gamblers
Most gamblers took no notice. While others hoped
that mathematicians might cure the reckless of their
passion for cards and dice with a strong dose of
calculation (Defoe, 1719).
There were a few exceptions, however:
Marquis de Dangeau (1638-1720) took advantage of
the new knowledge.
Statistically Guaranteed Profit: Losing My
REligion?
Thus, the meaning and implications
of probability theory gradually
seeped into the collective
consciousness of western society
over the next 200 years.
Whereby, gambling for the most part,
gradually lost its religious
connotations and became more of a
recreational pursuit or economical
pursuit.
Ultimately, probability theory allowed
for another path… Using a
discrepancy between true odds and
actual payouts to carve out a
statistically guaranteed profit.
Music Interlude:
Sting of My Heart
Tribute to a Gambling Legend:
Doc Holiday
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