A raffle is a competition in which people buy numbered tickets.
A raffle is often be held in order to raise funds for a specific event, charity or occasion.
The raffle either involves many people buying tickets for the chance to win a certain prize. At a set date the winners are drawn from a bucket containing copy of every number or a tombola. The bought ticket is then checked against a collection of prizes with numbers attached to them.
In the United Kingdom, raffles are occasionally used to circumvent licensing laws. While only licensed premises are permitted to sell alcohol, there is no restriction on the offering of alcohol as prizes in contests. As such, at certain events, attendees are able to enter a raffle, for which they purchase a ticket and then retrieve their prize, which is invariably an alcoholic drink.
A punchboard is a game board, primarily consisting of a number of holes which was used once for lottery playings.
History
Punchboards were originally used in the eighteenth century for gambling purposes. A local tavern owner would constuct a game board out of wood, drill small holes in it, and fill each hole with a small piece of paper. After a patron buyes the punchboard, he would puncture one of the holes in the paper with a nail. If the game piece contained a winning number, the patron won the prize.
Decline in use
In the nineteenth century, gamblers eventually drilled into their own holes (they knew where the big money was, because they made the board). The punchboard’s use started to decline.
Popular again
In the late 1800s, a new type of punchboard was introduced. This one involved putting paper in both the front and back of the hole (to help prevent operators from cheating). These new punchboards became popular to buy at drugstores, and they were sold with a metal stylus. The punchboard soon became increasingly similar to today’s lottery tickets.
Soon, the punchboard became cheap and easy to assemble, and the industry flourished. Noted gambling author John Scarne estimates that 30 million punchboards were sold in the years between 1910 to 1915. He also estimates that 50 million punchboards were sold in 1939 alone, during the peak of their popularity.
After the war
After World War II, use of the punchboard as a gambling tool began to decline because many people started to frown at its gambling-like nature, and the punchboard was outlawed in many states. However, the use of punchboards for advertisement were starting to gain popularity. Many companies started hiding goods such as bottles of beer and cigarettes inside punchboards. Zippo lighters reportedly sold more than 300,000 lighters through punchboard advertising between 1934 and 1940.
Larceny
People have been cheating on punchboards ever since they were first invented. Many operators know where the big prize holes are; they used to create punchboards with very few holes so they could easily track the big money.
Other gamblers could make a dirty deal with the costumers: give the costumer a “map” of where the big prizes are on the punchboard. This came to prevention by the use of serial numbers: the costumer would present the slip to the operator, and if the serial numbers matched, the costumer was declared a winner.
Other references in popular culture
The movie The Flim-Flam Man starring George C. Scott involved the use of illegal gambling through punchboards.
The Numbers Game or Policy Racket is a lottery game where the bettor attempts to pick three or four numbers from zero to nine that will be randomly drawn. Before the advent of state-operated lotteries, the gambler would place his or her bet with a bookie at a candy shop or a tavern. Today, state lotteries offer this game as the Daily Numbers Game. A runner carries the money and betting slips between the betting parlors and the headquarters.
Different policy banks would offer different payout ratios, though a payoff of 600 to 1 was typical. One of the game’s attractions to low income and working class bettors was the ability to bet small amounts of money. Usually a gambler could bet as little as ten cents with the possibility of winning sixty dollars. Also bookies, unlike state lotteries, could extend credit to the bettor.
In the northeastern United States this game was known as the “Nigger Pool”. This reflected the belief that the game originated in black neighborhoods.
One of the problems of the early game was to find a way to draw a random number that the bookie could not be accused of choosing unfairly. One method was to take the last three numbers in the published daily balance of the United States Treasury. When the Treasury began rounding off the balance many bookies began to use the “mutuel” number. This number consisted of the last dollar digit of the daily total handle of the Win, Place and Show bets at a local race track, read from top to bottom.
For example, if the daily handle was:
Win.. $1001.23
Place. $582.56
Show… $27.61
then the daily number was 127.
This variant of the numbers game, where the number depends on an event beyond the bookie’s control, is sometimes called a policy game.
In 1875, a report of a select committee of the New York State Assembly stated that “the lowest, meanest, worst form, however, which gambling takes in the city of New York, is what is known as policy playing.”[1]
Today, state lotteries use mechanical devices to draw the number. They also pay under a parimutuel betting system.
Since most bookies in the United States operate outside of the law, there is no way to gauge what effect the legalization of state-run gambling has had on the Numbers Game. Some gamblers still prefer to play with a bookie for a number of reasons. Among them are a guaranteed payoff, betting on credit, and calling in one’s bet on the telephone.
Payout
In illegal numbers games, typically certain more popular numbers, known as cut numbers, have reduced payoffs. A player’s chance of winning on one number is only one in 999; his winnings may pay off at 800 to 1.
^ Holice and Debbie, Our Police Protectors: History of New York Police Chapter 13, Part 1. Accessed on 4/2/2005
Many states have set up Lottery games that award a substantial prize, often in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to some lucky winner or group of winners. Such games often go by the name of Lotto or Super Lotto or even Mega Millions. In a typical game, either five or six rubber balls will be randomly selected by a machine from a set of 47, 49, or a similar valued number of balls. The number of balls is chosen so that the chance of a random player matching all of the numbers is anywhere from 1 in about 14 million (for a 6/49) game to something on the order of 1 in one hundred million or greater, for certain Mega games or Powerball games.
In a simple Lotto type game, the order in which the numbers are drawn from the machine does not matter, so if a ticket holder has the numbers 1,2,3,4 and 5, and if the order in which the machine selects these numbers is 5,2,4,3, and 1; then the ticket is still a winner. However in a mega game, in order to win the main prize, the player must match the first five numbers drawn in any order, but then must also match the last number drawn exactly. For the game which is currently offered in California under the name Super Lotto, the first five numbers drawn are from a set of 47 white rubber balls, which are selected by one machine, and the mega number is chosen as just one ball from a set of 27 purple balls, which is selected by a second machine. The Mega Millions game is similar, but it uses a set of 56 balls for the first five drawn, and another set of 46 for the final ball, known as the mega number.
Many lotteries have a “powerball” (or “bonus ball”). If the powerball is drawn from a different pool of numbers from the main lottery, then simply multiply the odds by the number of powerballs. For example, in the 6 from 49 lottery we have been discussing in this article, if there were 10 powerball numbers, then the odds of getting a score of 3 and the powerball would be 1 in 56.66 x 10, or 566.6 (the probability would, of course, be divided by 10, to give an exact value of 8815/4994220).
Where more than 1 powerball is drawn from a separate pool of balls to the main lottery (e.g. the Euromillions game), the odds of the different possible powerball matching scores should be calculated using the method shown in the “other scores” section above (in other words, treat the powerballs like a mini-lottery in their own right), and then multiplied by the odds of achieving the required main-lottery score.
If the powerball is drawn from the same pool of numbers as the main lottery, then, for a given target score, one must calculate the number of winning combinations which includes the powerball. For games based on the Canadian lottery (e.g. Lotto, the UK lottery), after the 6 main balls are drawn, an extra ball is drawn from the same pool of balls, and this becomes the powerball (or “bonus ball”), and there is an extra prize for matching 5 balls + the bonus ball. As described in the “other scores” section above, the number of ways one can obtain a score of 5 from a single ticket is c(6,5)*c(43,1), or 258. Since the number of remaining balls is 43, and your ticket has 1 unmatched number remaining, 1/43 of these 258 combinations will match the next ball drawn (the powerball) – so there are 258/43 = 6 ways of achieving it. Therefore, the odds of getting a score of 5 + powerball are c(49,6)/6 = 1 in 2,330,636.
Of the 258 combinations that match 5 of the main 6 balls, in 42/43 of them the remaining number will not match the powerball, giving odds of c(49,6)/(258*(42/43)) = 166474/3 (approx 55491.33) for obtaining a score of 5 without matching the powerball.
Using the same principle, to calculate the odds of getting a score of 2 + powerball, calculate the number of ways to get a score of 2 as c(6,2)*c(43,4) = 1,851,150 then multiply this by the probability of one of the remaining four numbers matching the bonus ball – which is 4/43. 1,851,150*(4/43) = 172,200, so the probability of obtaining the score of 2 + bonus ball is 172,200/c(49,6) = 1025/83237. This gives approximate decimal odds of 81.2.
One must calculate the total number of lottery combinations (c(49,6) = 13,983,816, as explained in the section above), and divide it by the number of those combinations which give the desired result – which equates to the number of ways one can select the winning numbers multiplied by the number of ways one can select the losing numbers.
For a score of n (e.g. if 3 of your numbers match the 6 balls drawn, then n=3), there are c(6,n) ways of selecting the n winning numbers from the 6 drawn balls. For one’s losing numbers, there are c(43,6 – n) ways to select them from the 43 losing lottery numbers. The total number of combinations giving that result is, as stated above, the first number multiplied by the second. The expression is therefore c(49,6)/(c(6,n)*c(43,6-n)). This gives the following results (remember that odds are the reciprocal of probability):
Score
Calculation
Exact Probability
Approximate Decimal Odds
0
c(49,6)/(c(6,0)*c(43,6))
435461/998844
1 in 2.29
1
c(49,6)/(c(6,1)*c(43,5))
68757/166474
1 in 2.42
2
c(49,6)/(c(6,2)*c(43,4))
44075/332948
1 in 7.55
3
c(49,6)/(c(6,3)*c(43,3))
8815/499422
1 in 56.66
4
c(49,6)/(c(6,4)*c(43,2))
645/665896
1 in 1032.4
5
c(49,6)/(c(6,5)*c(43,1))
43/2330636
1 in 54201
6
c(49,6)/(c(6,6)*c(43,0))
1/13983816
1 in 13983816
References
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
In a typical 6/49 lotto, 6 (k) numbers are drawn from a range of 49 (n) and if the 6 numbers on a ticket match the numbers drawn, the ticket holder is a jackpot winner – this is true no matter the order in which the numbers appear. The odds of this happening are 1 in 14 million (13,983,816 to be exact).
The relatively small chance of winning can be demonstrated as follows:
Starting with a bag of 49 differently-numbered lottery balls, there is clearly a 1 in 49 chance of predicting the number of the 1st ball out of the bag. Accordingly, there are 49 different ways of choosing that first number. When the draw comes to the 2nd number, there are now only 48 balls left in the bag (in case of no return of already drawn balls to the bag), so there is now a 1 in 48 chance of predicting this number.
Thus, each of the 49 ways of choosing the first number has 48 different ways of choosing the second. This means that the odds of correctly predicting 2 numbers drawn from 49 is calculated as: 49 x 48. On drawing the third number there are only 47 ways of choosing the number; but of course someone picking numbers would have gotten to this point in any of 49 x 48 ways, so the chances of correctly predicting 3 numbers drawn from 49 is calculated as: 49 x 48 x 47. This continues until the sixth number has been drawn, giving the final calculation: 49 x 48 x 47 x 46 x 45 x 44 (also written as 49! / (49-6)!). This works out to a very large number (10,068,347,520), which is however much bigger than the 14 million stated above.
The last step needed to understand that the order of the 6 numbers is not significant. That is, if a ticket has the numbers 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06 – it wins as long as all the numbers 1 through 6 are drawn, no matter what order they come out. Accordingly, given any set of 6 numbers, there are 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 6 factorial = 6! = 720 ways they could be drawn. Dividing 10,068,347,520 by 720 gives 13,983,816, also written as 49! / (6!·(49-6)!), or more generally as
C(n/k) = (n!)/(k!(n-k)!).
In most popular spreadsheets, the combinations function is COMBIN(n,k). For example, COMBIN(49,6) (the calculation shown above), would return 13,983,816. For the rest of this article, we will use the notation c(n,k) for convenience.
Kot bo sitah is a card game famous in the Arab world. It depends on putting a cap on a number and it is played by six people. The spades is usually the strongest thing to play with. The game depends on giving each player a set of random cards and he should through the cards and the spades always eat other.
The origins of this game are unknown but it can be found at the kitchen tables across the Canadian Prairies
Equipment
Chips
3+ Decks
2+ Players
Players
There are players and the dealer, both of which pivotal to game play. PLAYERS: participate in every game DEALER: the dealer only plays in games specified. They also play house and make up any differences. Position moves to the left each round.
Game Play
Dealer gives five cards to everyone face down.
I. Red Black Each player bets whether the majority of cards is red or black, if all are one type the bet is doubled.
II. Poker Dealers deals house hand face down. Players place bets against the house only.
III. Bingo Dealer calls bingo cards while players put one chip on every card called. The winner(s) get all chips placed on the cards
IV. Put & Take Dealer flips cards (one at a time); first puts in one, second puts in two… and then first takes one, second takes two… the dealer makes up the difference
V. Counting Dealer flips cards from deck counting out loud (ace, two, three…). If a card flipped matches the verbal card, players give the amount on the card (Jack eleven, Queen twelve, King thirteen)
End Of Game
As soon as a player runs out of chips the player is out of the game. If the game is called short the player with the most chip wins.
Fuck the Dealer is a simple drinking game popular in the Midwest. It is best played by three to six players, although it can be played with more. It is similar to the game Hi-Lo, except that all cards are laid out face up on the table once they’ve been played.
The rules
Play starts with one person, the ‘Dealer’, shuffling the cards and placing them face down in front of him.
The person to the dealer’s left becomes the first ‘Player’. The Player tries to guess what the top card on the deck is. The dealer then looks at the top card and tells him whether or not his guess was right. If the player guesses correctly, the dealer takes five drinks. Otherwise, the dealer tells the player whether the top card is ‘Higher’ or ‘Lower’ than his guess. The player then gets one more chance to guess correctly. If he guesses correctly on the second attempt, the dealer takes three drinks. If the player guesses incorrectly, the player drinks the difference between his guess and the card. (i.e. if he guesses a ’5′ and the card was a really ’3′, the player must take 2 drinks.)
In either case, the dealer now places the card face up in front of him. Arrange the cards in an organized fashion, so everyone can see which cards have already been drawn(see image right). When all four of a particular card have been drawn, it is considered to be “closed out”. Cards which have been closed out are flipped over to help everyone see that no more of those cards are available.
Now, play continues and the dealer looks at the next person and asks him to pick a card. This continues until two players in a row guess incorrectly. When that happens, the player to the dealer’s left becomes the new ‘Dealer’.
It is important to note that there are two ‘circles’ going on – the dealer circle, and the player circle. The next ‘Dealer’ is always the person to the current dealer’s left. Likewise, the next ‘player’ is always the person to the left of the last player — The next player does not change just because a new person is made dealer. The next player is NOT automatically the person to the new dealer’s left… unless of course the player to the Dealer’s left is the next person in line. And of course, the player and the dealer cannot be the same person. But if that situation should ever occur, the ‘dealer’ circle takes priority over the ‘player’ circle.
Play continues until the dealer is left with three cards. At that point, the dealer is considered to be ‘Fucked’ and must do a shot. (Since there are only three cards, the player is guaranteed to guess correctly on the second attempt. Therefore, the dealer is figuratively ‘Fucked’! Hence, the title of the game)
Faro was undoubtedly one of the most popular card games of the 18th century, especially among the lower classes. Although both faro and Basset were forbidden in France, on severe penalties, these games continued to be in great vogue in England during the 18th century; apparently because it was easy to learn, it gave the appearance of being very fair, and, lastly, it was a very quiet, quick game, and could be played discreetly. “Our life here,” writes Gilly Williams to George Selwyn in 1752, “would not displease you, for we eat and drink well, and the Earl of Coventry holds a Pharaoh-bank every night to us, which we have plundered considerably.” Charles James Fox preferred faro to any other game, as did american con man Soapy Smith. It was said that every faro table in Soapy’s Tivoli Club, in Denver, Colorado in 1889 was gaffed (made to cheat). Faro was played all over the United States, by the rich and the poor, during the 19th century.
Faro’s detractors regarded it as a dangerous scam that destroyed families and reduced men to poverty. This reputation is likely due to the use by some bankers of rigged dealing boxes that allowed the banker to manipulate the draw of the cards after observing the players’ bets.
Faro bankers were alleged to employ ‘gentlemen’ to give a very favourable report of the game to the town, so that the games would be allowed to transpire without further inquiry.
A game of faro was often called a ‘faro bank.’ It was played with an entire pack of playing cards, and admitted of an indeterminate number of players, termed ‘punters,’ and a ‘banker.’ Chips (called ‘checks’) were purchased by the punter from the banker or house from which the game originated. Bet values and limits were set by the house. Usual check values were 50 cents to $10. each.
The faro table was square, with a distinguished cut-out for the ‘banker.’ A board with a standardized betting layout consisting of one card of each denomination pasted to it, called ‘the layout,’ was placed on top of the table. (Traditionally, the suit of spades was used for the layout.) Each player laid his stake on one of the 13 cards on the layout. Players could place multiple bets and could bet on multiple cards simultaneously by placing their bet between cards or on specific card edges. Players also had the choice of betting on ‘the high card’ located at the top of ‘the layout.’
A deck of cards was placed face-up inside a ‘dealing box,’ a mechanical shoe used to prevent manipulations of the draw by the banker, and was supposed to assure players of a fair game. Many sporting house supply companies sold gaffed dealing box, that were made so that the banker could cheat. The first card in the dealing box is called the ‘top card,’ and is “burned” off, leaving 51 cards in play. As the ‘top card’ is pulled out of the dealing box, it exposes the first card in play, which is called the ‘banker’s card,’ and placed on the right side of the dealing box in the other, called the carte anglaise, or English card, and simply called the ‘player’s card’ in the United States for the players, placed on the left.
The banker collects on all the money staked on the card laid on the right, and had to pay double the sums staked on those on the card remaining on the left (in the dealing box). In modern betting terms, the payoff on these winning wagers was “2 for 1″, which is the same as odds of “1 to 1″, also called “even money”.
A player could “copper” their bet by placing an octagon shaped token called a “copper.” Some histories claim a penny was sometimes used in place of a copper. This reversed the meaning of the win/loss piles for that particular bet. An abaccus-like device, called a “case keep” is employed to assist the players and prevent dealer cheating by counting cards. The operator of the case keep is called the “case keeper.”
Certain advantages were reserved to the banker: — if he drew a doublet, that is, two equal cards, he won half of the stakes upon the card which equalled the doublet. In a fair game, this provided the only house edge.
If the banker drew for the players the last card of the pack, he was exempt from doubling the stakes deposited on that card. In most cases, when 3 cards remained, the dealer would offer a specialized bet called “betting the turn.” This bet offers a 5 for 1 payout if the players can identify the exact order of the last 3 cards.
Faro is a card game, a descendant of Basset. It enjoyed great popularity during the 18th century, particularly in England and France, and in the 19th Century in the United States, particularly on the American Frontier, where it was practiced by ‘faro dealers’ such as the infamous Doc Holliday. It has since fallen completely out of fashion and is only practiced by dedicated Old West enthusiasts and Civil War re-enactors. Its name is believed to be a corruption of pharaoh, and refers to the Egyptian motif that commonly adorned French-made playing cards of the period.Faro is similar to the contemporary game of Mini-Baccarat.
Literary fiction
Faro is the game played in Aleksandr Pushkin’s short story The Queen of Spades.
Faro is also played in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov.
Movies
Faro is played by characters in saloons on the HBO series “Deadwood”.
Scenes involving the game of faro (with varying degrees of accuracy) appear in the Hollywood movies Wyatt Earp, starring Kevin Costner, and Tombstone, starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday.
In the film The Sting, it is said that the gangster (and intended “mark”) Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) only plays faro when he goes out to casinos, and then only by himself.
HTML clipboardBlind Hookey is a card game played with a full pack of cards, sometimes used for the purpose of gambling.The players, of whom there may be any number, cut for deal, the lowest having the preference. The pack is then shuffled by the player on the dealer’s right hand, and afterwards, if he so please, by the dealer himself, after which it is cut by the right-hand player. The two halves are then re-united, and the pack is passed to the player on the left of the dealer, who cuts from the top a small quantity of cards (not less than four, nor more than his due proportion of the pack). The pack is then passed to the next player, who cuts a similar portion, and so on round the circle, the cards left belonging to the dealer. No one looks at his cards, but makes his stake on pure speculation; hence the name “blind” hookey. The dealer then turns up his cards, and shows the bottom one; the other players do the same. Each player holding a higher card than that of the dealer receives the amount of his stake; all below or equal pay the dealer. This is repeated until a hand occurs in which the dealer is a loser all round, when the deal is at an end, and the next player deals.
Alternative method
The cards are shuffled and cut, before the dealer cuts them into three portions. Two of these are for the company, the third for himself. The other players place their stakes on whichever two packets they please, the rejected packet being taken by the dealer.
The stakes having been made, the cards are turned up, and the players receive or pay as the bottom cards of their packets prove to be higher or lower than that of the dealer.
The game of Basset (in French Bassette, from Italian Bassetta) was considered one of the most polite games with cards, and only fit for persons of the highest rank to play at, on account of the great losses or gains that might accrue on one side or the other.The sums of money lost in France at this game were so considerable that the princes of the blood were in danger of being undone; and after many persons of distinction were ruined the court of France thought fit to forbid Basset. Then faro was invented; and both were soon introduced into England, and after three or four years’ play here, they impoverished so many families, that Parliament enacted a suppression of both games, with severe penalties. The two games are, therefore, of historical interest, and deserve an explanation.
Basset was a sort of lottery. The dealer who kept the bank at Basset, having the sole disposal of the first and last card, and other considerable privileges in dealing the cards, had a much greater prospect of gaining than those who played. This was a truth so acknowledged in France that the king, by public edict, ordered that the privilege of a talliere, or banker at Basset, should only be allowed to the ‘chief cadets,’ or sons of noblemen — supposing that whoever kept the bank must, in a very short time, acquire a considerable fortune.
In this game there was:
The Talliere, the banker, who laid down a sum of money to answer every winning card which might turn up.
The Croupiere, the assistant of the former, standing by to supervise the losing cards, — so that when there were many at play he might not lose by overlooking anything which might turn up to his profit.
The Punter, or every player
The Fasse, that is, the first card turned up by the talliere, by which he gained half the value of the money laid upon every card of that sort by the punters or players.
The Couch, which was the first stake that every punter laid upon each card — every player having a book of 13 cards before him, upon which he must lay his money, more or less, according to his fancy.
The Paroli: in this, whoever won the couch, and intended to go on for another advantage, crooked the corner of his card, letting his money lie, without being paid the value by the talliere.
The Masse, which was, when those who had won the couch, would venture more money on the same card.
The Pay, which was when the player had won the couch, and, being doubtful of making the paroli, left off; for by going the pay, if the card turned up wrong, he lost nothing, having won the couch before; but if by this adventure fortune favoured him, he won double the money he had staked.
The Alpieu was when the couch was won by turning up, or crooking, the corner of the winning card.
The Sept-et-le-va was the first great chance that showed the advantages of the game, namely, if the player had won the couch, and then made a paroli by crooking the corner of his card, and going on to a second chance, if his winning card turned up again it became a sept-et-le-va, which was seven times as much as he had laid upon his card.
Quinze-et-le-va, was attending the player’s humour, who, perhaps, was resolved to follow his fancy, and still lay his money upon the same card, which was done by crooking the third corner of his card: if this card came up by the dealing of the talliere, it made him win fifteen times as much money as he staked.
Trent-et-le-va was marked by the lucky player by crooking the end of the fourth corner of his card, which, coming up, made him win thirty-three times as much money as he staked.
Soissante-et-le-va was the highest chance that could happen in the game, for it paid sixty-seven times as much money as was staked. It was seldom won except by some player who resolved to push his good fortune to the utmost.
The players sat round a table, the talliere in the midst of them, with the bank of gold before him, and the punters or players each having a book of 13 cards, laying down one, two, three, or more, as they pleased, with money upon them, as stakes; then the talliere took the pack in his hand and turned them up — the bottom card appearing being called the fasse; he then paid half the value of the stakes laid down by the punters upon any card of that sort.
After the fasse was turned up, and the talliere and croupiere had looked round the cards on the table, and taken advantage of the money laid on them, the former proceeded with his deal; and the next card appearing, whether the king, queen, ace, or whatever it might be, won for the player, the latter might receive it, or making paroli, as before said, go on to sept-et-le-va. The card after that won for the talliere, who took money from each player’s card of that sort, and brought it into his bank — obviously a prodigious advantage in the talliere over the players.
The talliere, if the winning card was a king, and the next after it was a ten, said (showing the cards all round), ‘King wins, ten loses,’ paying the money to such cards as are of the winning sort, and taking the money from those who lost, added it to his bank. This done, he went on with the deal, it might be after this fashion — ‘Ace wins, five loses; ‘Knave wins, seven loses;’ and so on, every other card alternately winning and losing, till all the pack was dealt but the last card.
The last card turned up was, by the rules of the game, for the advantage of the talliere; although a player might have one of the same sort, still it was allowed to him as one of the dues of his office, and he paid nothing on it.
The bold player who was lucky and adventurous, and could push on his couch with a considerable stake to sept-et-le-va, quinze-et-le-va, trente-et-le-va, &c., must in a wonderful manner have multiplied his couch, or first stake; but this was seldom done; and the loss of the players, by the very nature of the game, invariably exceeded that of the bank; in fact, this game was altogether in favour of the bank; and yet it is evident that — in spite of this obvious conviction — the game must have been one of the most tempting and fascinating that was ever invented.
Our English adventurers made this game very different to what it was in France, for there, by royal edict, the public at large were not allowed to play at more than a franc or ten-penny bank, — and the losses or gains could not bring desolation to a family; but in England our punters could do as they liked — staking from one guinea to one hundred guineas and more, upon a card, ‘as was often seen at court,’ says the old author, my informant. When the couch was alpieued, parolied, to sept-et-le-va, quinze-et-le-va, trente-et-le-va, &c., the punter’s gains were prodigious, miraculous; and if fortune befriended him so as to bring his stake to soissante-et-le-va, he was very likely to break the bank, by gaining a sum which no talliere could pay after such tremendous multiplication. But this rarely happened. The general advantage was with the bank — as must be quite evident from the explanation of the game — besides the standing rule that no two cards of the same sort turning up could win for the players; the second always won for the bank. In addition to this there were other ‘privileges’ which operated vastly in favour of the banker.
However, it was ‘of so bewitching a nature,’ says our old writer, ‘by reason of the several multiplications and advantages which it seemingly offered to the unwary punter, that a great many like it so well that they would play at small game rather than give out; and rather than not play at all would punt at six-penny, three-penny, nay, a twopenny bank, — so much did the hope of winning the quinze-et-le-va and the trente-et-le-va intoxicate them.’
Of course there were frauds practised at Basset by the talliere, or banker, in addition to his prescriptive advantages. The cards might be dealt so as not to allow the punter any winning throughout the pack; and it was in the power of the dealer to let the punter have as many winnings as he thought convenient, and no more!
It is said that Basset was invented by a noble Venetian, who was punished with exile for the contrivance. The game was prohibited by Louis XIV, in 1691, and soon after fell into oblivion in France, although flourishing in England. It was also called Barbacole and Hocca.
A lottery machine is the machine used to draw the winning numbers for a lottery.Early lotteries were done by drawing numbers, or winning tickets, from a container.
In the UK, numbers of winning Premium Bonds (which were not strictly a lottery, but very similar in approach) were generated by an electronic machine called ERNIE.
A popular type of modern lottery machine has a rotating drum with contrarotating arms inside. A number of balls, each with a possible winning number on, are dropped into the drum while it is spinning. A mechanism then extracts a pre-determined number of balls to be the winning numbers, one at a time. Machines of this type are used in Lotto type games, such as ‘Lotto 6-49′, Lotto 6/48 or other formulas. See the UK National Lottery.
Because of the massive payoff for a successful cheat, lottery machines are subject to strict security measures. In some cases there are several machines and several sets of balls, and the combination to be used is selected at random just before the draw.
Lottery jackpot records are a matter of some interest to both participants and observers of this form of gambling.It is often said that the annual Christmas lottery in Spain, dubbed El Gordo (The Fat One), is the largest in the world. In 2003 its prize fund reached (converting euros to approximate dollars) $2,200,000,000 with a first prize of $470,000,000 and second prize of $235,000,000. However, every number entered in this lottery is on 170 tickets which are often sold in fractions (usually tenths). Thus, the El Gordo prize is usually split, and is not comparable to the winner-take-all style drawings popular elsewhere.
U.S.A. lotteries
The largest draw prize in a lottery was US $365 million Powerball on February 18, 2006 won by a group of eight meat processing workers in Nebraska. The 2nd largest draw prize in a lottery was the US $363 million Big Game jackpot of May 9, 2000, split between two winners. This game was relaunched as Mega Millions, with odds lengthened to 135 million to one, in May 2002, and the odds further lengthened to 175 million to one in June 2005, but the jackpot record has not been broken. The largest single Big Game or Mega Millions winner has been Geraldine Williams of Lowell, Massachusetts, USA, with the $294 million annuity-value jackpot of the July 2, 2004 drawing. The Mega Millions jackpot of November 15, 2005, divided by seven employees of a medical center who shared one winning ticket, had an annuity value of $315 million, but the lump sum value was a record $187.1 million.
The largest single winner of any lottery prize was Andrew J. Whittaker Jr. of West Virginia, who won $314.9 million in the Powerball drawing of December 25, 2002. Opting as most large prize winners in the U.S. do for the lump sum, his after-tax prize has been variously reported as $111,681,349 and $113,386,407.77. Because of different tax rates, the $168 million lump sum opted for by Mega Millions winner Geraldine Williams (see previous paragraph) was reported as $117.6 million after taxes. Harold and Helen Lerner of New Jersey also claimed a higher after-tax lump sum than Whittaker in the Mega Millions of September 16, 2005 as New Jersey has no state tax on lottery prizes. The October 19, 2005 Powerball drawing won by nine members of the West and Chaney families of Medford, Oregon was for a larger annuity ($340 million) but a smaller lump sum than Whittaker’s.
State lotteries in the United States
The record annuity-value prizes in the largest state lottery games in the United States have been:
California: $193 million to three tickets February 16, 2002; to single winner, $141 million to Alcario Castellano on June 23, 2001
New York: $130 million in special Millennium Millions game November 4, 2000, shared by two winners; to single winner, $100 million to Johnnie Ely in Millennium Millions of December 31st 1999; in regular New York Lotto, $72 million to four tickets May 31, 1997; single-ticket record for New York Lotto is $58 million
Pennsylvania: $115.6 million shared among fourteen winning tickets in April 1989, in Super 7 game later discontinued after a scandal; in subsequent Super 6 game $86,192,222.20 in December 1999, claimed by Shemonski family in March 2000
Florida: $106.5 million to six tickets in September 1990
Texas: estimated $145 million June 19, 2004
Ohio: $75 million April 13, 2002.
The ratio between lump sum and annuity value varies over time with interest rates and possible alterations in the length of the period for which payments are made.
European lotteries
Unlike in the United States, where lottery wins are taxed, and the full winnings are paid by an annuity over a period of many years or a reduced lump-sum amount is offered, European lotteries are generally tax-free and the winning jackpot is paid out immediately in one lump sum.
EuroMillions is a pan-European lottery, with odds of 1 in 76,275,360. In July 2005, Irish woman, Dolores McNamara won a tax-free €115,436,126 ($139m) jackpot. On February 3, 2006, EuroMillions had a prize of €183 million ($219m), which was shared between three winning tickets, two in France and one in Portugal, each winning €61,191,026.
The largest win on the British National Lottery, established in 1994, is currently £22,590,829 (US$40 million) won on 10 June 1995 by Paul Maddison and Mark Gardiner. The oldest person made a sterling millionaire by the lottery was Gracie Vera Coulson, who was 87 when she won £1,090,387 in December 1999. Two 16 year olds and two 17 year olds have also won between £1 and £2 million.
The Irish National Lottery, established in 1987 and replacing the Irish Sweepstakes which had run since 1930, has a guaranteed jackpot of €1,500,000 for each of its twice-weekly draws. The largest ever win was €7,892,753 won in May 1997 by an anonymous winner from Cork.
Jueteng (pronounced wet-teng) is an illegal numbers game played in the Philippines. Jueteng came from China and it means flower (jue) and bet (teng). Although illegal, it is a widely popular game with participation that crosses most, if not all social and economic boundaries, played by rich and poor alike. With long odds and no limits on minimum or maximum bets, the lure of quick riches through a lucrative payout is by far its strongest appeal.The game relies heavily on having a large number of wagers, and there is no limit to the amount of the bet(s). Usually the gambler selects two numbers from 1 through 37, and the winning number is determined by selecting a pair of numbers from a set of 37 numbered balls. Thus the theoretical odds of winning on any one play are one in 37C2, or 1/666. This is unlike the numbers games in the U.S. during the early part of the 20th century, where the last digit of the winning pay out or the number of the winning horse for three consecutive races determined the winning combination.
Although much has been done to curtail or eradicate this form of unregulated gambling by government and community leaders, it appears that such efforts have fallen by the wayside due to its vast popularity, and the poverty which cripples the country.
Scandals
Jueteng was brought to notoriety in 2000 during the impeachment proceedings of deposed Philippine President Joseph Estrada, who was accused of receiving illegal payoffs from gambling profits. Another political scandal erupted in June 2005 involving allegations that relatives of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo received payouts from jueteng operators.
Bovine bingo is a traditional rural fundraising game that is often played at country fetes and summer fairs, usually for fundraising purposes.Bovine bingo is not really a form of bingo, but a form of lottery. The game is set up by marking out a grid of rectangles on an enclosed land area, such as a paddock or farm field. This is usually done by chalking lines. The grid cells are then numbered or otherwise identified in some way, and chances are sold on each cell. A cow (or other livestock animal) is then let loose within the enclosure. Where the first “cowflop” (defecation) lands determines the winner. Another popular variation of this game takes place during parades, usually with horses. Same rules apply, however.
The game is also known as “Cowpie Bingo”, “Fertilizer Lotto”, “Cow Patty Bingo”, “Cow Pat Lottery”, or “Bossy Bingo.”
4-Digits (4D) is a Singapore lottery. People play by choosing any number from 0000 to 9999. 23 number combinations are drawn every time. If one of the numbers match the one that the player has bought, a prize is won.
Methods of Play
Ordinary Entry
Ordinary entry refers to a specific number. Example: 1234
4-D Roll
4-D Roll refers to a bet which substitutes any one of the four digits with ‘R’. (i.e. R123, 1R23, 12R3 and 123R) where ‘R’ denotes all digits from 0 to 9. Only one digit can be substituted with ‘R’. For example, if you mark R234, you are actually buying 10 Ordinary Entries (i.e. 0234, 1234, 2234, 3234 …. 9234).
System Entry
System entry refers to a bet on all the possible permutations of a 4-D number, e.g. the number 1234 has 24 permutations (1234, 2341, 3412, 4123…).
iBet
iBet is a System Entry bet priced from $1, regardless of the number of permutations.
Quickpick
Quick pick refers to a bet on a random number selected by the computer.
Bet on the Champions League - Find detailed, continually updated information on the Champions League, together with a history of the event and options for online betting at bet123.net. Other major sporting and betting events are also covered.
Industry: Gaming - Latest news releases for Industry: Gaming from PRWeb
online casino games - at the new Silver Oak Casino? With $750 in Welcome Bonuses, Second Chance Free Chips and great new monthly offers Silver Oak is the place to be!
poker site - More Fantastic Online Poker Signup Bonuses
