We can imagine that poker is the most widely played casino card game. While the game is thought to have had its 'official' birth sometime before the early 1800s, the roots of poker are much older. Games of chance have been played for thousands of years – for example, dominoes, dice games, and concepts featuring cards.
Domino cards, for example, are believed to have originated in China well over a thousand years ago. Many historians suggest it was invented to coincide with Emperor Mu-Tsung's New Year’s Eve festivities. Similar games were found across the ancient world, including in Persia, where the game of ganijfa (Treasure Cards), famously featured a deck of 96 exquisitely carved ivory cards. The Spaniards played primero, which featured three-card hands, bluffing, and bet-raising rules, while the Germans had a similar concept called pochen.
The game spread like wildfire everywhere it went. It soon worked its way up from New Orleans and along the Mississippi River, becoming the game of classic casino poker. Today, televised poker, online poker, and online tournaments all take their lead from this game. Other casino games such as baccarat, blackjack, and craps also emerged similarly.
Online Keno may have an ultra-modern look to it, with the chance to win huge jackpots – but it hasn't always been this way. Indeed, many casino gaming historians suggest that Keno is one of the oldest casino games in existence – dating back to ancient Chinese dynasties.
Funds were depleted by unexpected war expenditure, and some bright spark worked out that casino gaming could be the answer to their financial woes. However, the early Keno concept was thought to be little more than a basic lottery, with the modern game that resembles online Keno not being developed until the mid-1800s when Chinese immigrants brought the game with them to the western world.
It's hard to truly define what the oldest casino game in existence is, but we do know this: the most popular games today have their roots in the very ancient past.
While roulette as we know it originated in France in the 18th century, it was invented (in a sense) in the 17th by physicist Blaise Pascal. Pascal was trying to create a perpetual motion machine – a device that would continually spin via its energy. While his machine didn't work, it did lay the foundations for the roulette wheel.
In the 1720s, an early version of the game, with the undeniably inventive name of 'roly poly' appeared in Britain and was banned by 1739. Towards the end of the 18th century, the roulette wheel we're now all familiar with took shape and started to appear in establishments across France. The numbers on the wheel were inspired and taken from the French game of Biribi, which was a form of low-stakes lotto.
The very first reference to blackjack, or rather the early form of it called 21, is found in a book by the legendary Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. One of the short stories in his Novelas Ejemplares follows two card cheats that are experts at rigging games of 21 to their advantage. This particular story was written in the very early 1600s, which means blackjack had probably been enjoyed by Spanish players for quite sometime before that.