Gambling in American History

For over four decades, Benny Binion was a local hero in Las Vegas; actually, he was a hero among the gambling community worldwide. He was the “Cowboy Gambler,” who-like his image in bronze on a horse at Second and Ogden streets in downtown Las Vegas – always rode “high in the saddle.” His casino, Binion’s Horseshoe, gained the reputation for being the “gamblers’ casino” in Las Vegas. His casino started the World Series of Poker, and his casino was the only casino that would take a “hit” for any amount of money. Here, a hit is a single bet on a single play (see Glossary). It is a bet where both sides let it all ride, one time, one spin of the wheel, and one whirl of the dice—no next time, one time. Most casinos will limit “hits” to the normal table limits—several thousands of dollars. Binion’s had no limit. The limit was what the player was willing to lay down on the table in hard cash. Hits are risky business, because the laws of probability are based upon large numbers—large numbers of bets. One time a gambler came in with a suitcase of money. He opened the suitcase and poured $777,000 on the table. He bet on “don’t pass” on the craps table. The dice rolled a few times, and the boxman called out “don’t pass wins.” The cage prepared a stack of cash worth $1,554,000, and the gambler took the money and left. If a casino that was owned by a publicly traded corporation did something so risky, a stockowner lawsuit might just be successful. But the Binion family privately held Binion’s. And maybe they were not being too risky, because the publicity they received for paying off a bet like that was also worth a whole lot of money. Actually, the same man came back and later bet $1,000,000 and lost. So in the long run, it had been good business. Three months later the man committed suicide. He was broke, but the police said he had romantic problems, too.
I did a few shots for the PBS show “Going Places: Las Vegas.” When we went into a casino on the Strip, people were crowding the cameras, waving their hands and calling out “Hi, Mom” and the like. But when we went into the Horseshoe, we shot an interview with the poker pit directly behind us. The producers did not have to make a double take, nor did they have to wait for the place to be quiet or for a distracting guest to move on. We shot the interview and not one single bettor even lifted his eyes to observe the network cameras. The bettors were more interested in the action on the table. On the Strip, the action might have been a television camera; in the Horseshoe, the action was the next card being dealt. Over the decades that Benny Binion reigned as the cowboy gambler, and when he and his wife and sons ran the casino, other gambling entrepreneurs came to Binion’s when they wanted to gamble. It was their local casino. Called the “most popular gambler” in the United States, Binion was especially popular with his fellow casino owners. He did not cater to tourists, except the hard-core gambling kind. He had no show, no music, and no two-for-one “fun book.” He did not have people out in the streets hawking the wares, trying to get the sucker in the door. His players were not suckers. He gave the best odds on the table games, offering all the options in blackjack and giving ten times odds for even bets at craps. His machines were programmed to give the largest payouts in Las Vegas—and Las Vegas gives the best payouts of any gambling city in the world.
 Benny Binion’s one concession to the tourists was a plastic-covered horseshoe display of one million dollars in cash; he had mounted 100 ten-thousand-dollar bills. He invited the public to come in and look and to have their picture taken with the money at no cost. When I saw that, my head began to spin numbers around, figuring that he was losing a couple hundred dollars a day just in the interest the money could be earning in a bank. But then, maybe the money was in a bank, and maybe he could not be earning the interest. The Nevada gambling regulators demand that large casinos have several millions of dollars on hand at all times in order to cover any large win that a player (perhaps with a suitcase) may have at any moment. Las Vegas builds its reputation on paying off, and the reputation could disappear quickly if there was a pattern of casinos making players wait until the “other” banks opened before they got their money. After all, when the player loses, the casino takes the money right away (well, there are credit gamblers too). The million on display may just have been part of the cage requirement, and Binion would also have been out the interest if he had had the money locked in a vault. Moreover, with the extra security (and the money was well guarded) of having the displayed million dollars, other casinos could always count on Binion’s having surplus funds. When other casinos hit a run of bad luck and their reserves fell below what the law requires, very often they would send a special security detail up to the Horseshoe to borrow a million or two, just to tide them over until the “other” banks opened. Rumor has it that Steve Wynn, as the executive of the Golden Nugget across the street from the Horseshoe, had to do just that.
Benny Binion was born in Pilot Point, Grayson County, Texas, in 1904. When he was fifteen years old, he dropped out of school and ran away, first to El Paso and then to Dallas. He got a job in the St. George Hotel, and there he learned about gambling.  When in his later years he was asked if he would do it again, he said yes, he would have had to become a gambler: “What else could an uneducated person do?” Dallas was a wide-open town, a place of opportunity. At age twenty-two, Benny opened a casino game at the Southland Hotel, and two years later he established a leadership role in the Dallas numbers games. Things in Dallas were rough, and the competition could be tough. Although the government tolerated games for a price (he paid ten dollars a gambler to the politicians in order to stay open), others wanted him closed. In two separate instances he was in gun battles over just who would stay open; he survived. Two others died and were never able to spin the wheels of fortune again. One of those times Binion received a suspended sentence; he was acquitted on grounds of self-defense the other time. During World War II he bought a casino in Fort Worth, but its time was limited. There was a crackdown on Texas gambling after the war. There had been twenty-seven casinos in the Dallas area during the war, and some felt they could stay and try to ride it out until another election could bring the right people to office. Binion did not; he packed up his family in 1946 and went to Las Vegas.
In Las Vegas, Benny Binion opened a casino on Fremont Street along with Kell Houssels, a man who was actively involved in many casinos. As time went on, however, Binion felt that he was being restricted on doing things the way he wanted to do things. Houssells did not like the idea of allowing the players to have high limits. Some professional operators figure that with high limits, the players can use a system called the Martingale, which allows them to keep doubling their bets when they lose, and eventually they will win. But Binion knew (and it was a risk as to when) that streaks or runs of a wheel on black or red, odd or even very often can go five, six, seven, or more in length. Increasing the odds only allows one or two more bets against a fate of losing.
Binion broke up the partnership, and in 1951 he bought the Apache Hotel, renaming it Binion’s Horseshoe. His limits became the highest limits in town. On one occasion the Mob leaders at the Flamingo did persuade Binion that he should not try to compete with them too vigorously, and Binion lowered his keno limit for a while.
Binion’s problems with the law did not end when he came to Las Vegas. In the mid-1950s, he was convicted of income tax evasion and served forty-two months in a federal prison. When he was released in 1957, the state of Nevada suspended his casino license, and management of the Horseshoe was given to his wife and his son Jack. Jack carried on the tradition of Benny Binion when he established the World Series of Poker in 1969. The tournament has grown considerably since that time. All players must put up $10,000 to enter. The winner collects a million dollars. Amateurs from every corner of the globe come to compete with the most professional of all gamblers. I was in Birmingham, England, touring casinos, when I came upon the Rainbow. There I found a big sign and a program for Binion’s World Series. The casino ran the British Poker Championship, and the first prize was an all-expense paid trip to Las Vegas with the stakes to enter Binion’s World Series.
On 1 June 1988, the Horseshoe empire spread out a bit, and the Binion family purchased the next-door Mint Casino from the Del Webb estate for $27 million. The Horseshoe casino expanded its gambling area and also gained 300 hotel rooms. Previously, the Horseshoe had fewer than 100 rooms. The Horseshoe also took over the restaurant at the top of the Mint, and it became the Steakhouse. There the finest beef, nurtured on Binion’s Montana ranch, was served. The casino was also able to expand its complimentary services with the larger facility. Over one-million-dollars worth of free food was given to selected players each month. Rarely did the casino charge a full price room rate. Most rooms were frequently occupied by very good players.
On Christmas Day 1989, Benny Binion went on to “cowboy heaven,” and he left his family in charge of the gambling on Fremont Street. Jack Binion, who was born in 1937, carried on. He also branched out, establishing the number-one riverboat casino in Louisiana and then the number-one revenue-producing casino in Tunica, Mississippi.  He has since become a partner in an Illinois riverboat. Family fights consumed the business after Benny’s wife, Teddy, died in 1994. Jack’s brother, Ted, was involved with substance abuse problems and lost his casino license. He later died suspiciously, murdered by a former girl friend and her new boyfriend, who were seeking Ted’s wealth. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal of 20 May 2000, the couple was tried and convicted of the murder in 2000. Two sisters fought Jack over control of the casino, and finally Jack sold the property to one of his sisters and devoted his full attention to gambling interests in the Mississippi Valley. The legend of the “cowboy gambler” is still found in Las Vegas under the canopy of the Fremont Street Experience.

Bingo has been the quintessential charity game in the United States for most of a century. Expansions of the game (in terms of hours played and prize amounts) led to the court cases culminating in decisions that generated the initiation and widespread proliferation of Native American gambling in the United States. Bingo is also played in many commercial casinos. The game demands vigilance and attention from the players, who may form a collective audience of a dozen or several thousand (or more with satellite connections among several bingo halls).
Bingo is played on two basic styles of cards. A bingo card in the United States has 25 spaces: 5 rows and 5 columns. Numbers are on 24 spaces; the center space has a star or another mark, designating it as a “free space.” The columns are designated as B, I, N, G, and O. Under the respective letters are numbers between 1 and 15, 16 and 30, 31 and 45, 46 and 60, and 61 and 75. In simple games, the object is to get 4 or 5 numbers called to fill a column, a row, or a diagonal line through the center or to fill in each corner of a card. More complex games may require filling in a pattern (for example, a letter T—top row and center N column; filling the outer edge—top and bottom rows and B and O columns) or covering all 24 numbers on the card.
The second type of card, popular in Europe, is called a tombola. The card has 3 lines and 5 columns. Each individual card has 5 numbers on a line, for 15 numbers in all. Eighty-one numbers are used in the game. Each game has 2 winners. The first winner is the one who first calls “bingo” when all 5 numbers of any one line are filled. The second winner is one who gets all 15 numbers on the card filled.
Although casinos and bingo halls may offer guaranteed prizes for winners of certain games, traditionally the prize pool has been taken from player purchases of cards, making the game a pari-mutuel player-banked exercise in gambling. If two or more persons win at the same time, the prize is divided. On big cover-all games, a bingo hall may offer a big prize if the cover-all is reached within a certain number of calls, for instance, forty-five numbers. If it is not, a part of the prize pool may be carried over to another day, and the big prize increased in a progressive manner.
In many Las Vegas casinos that cater to senior citizens, bingo offers a large return to the players. That practice is used as an incentive to draw in customers who are expected to play slot machines and other games between and after the bingo games.
The numbers called at the bingo game usually appear on Ping-Pong balls that blow about in a sealed cage. When a small tunnel to the cage is opened, one ball is sucked up into an area where a caller can take it. The number on the ball is called and then recorded on a board that all can see. The ball is usually held up so that it can physically be seen as well. If a player has a win, he (more appropriately she, as more players of bingo are women than men—quite different than almost all other games) must call out “bingo” before the next number is called. The bingo card is then verified to ensure that all numbers are on it and that it contains the last number called.
The percentage payout varies considerably, depending upon the desires for an operator to get a certain return from the players by setting prizes at a certain level. The bingo game utilized today is an outgrowth of a private Italian game called lotto. This in turn was derived from a national lottery game that began in the sixteenth century. Forms of bingo (called by other names) were played in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. The popularity of the game was developed in the 1920s, when movie halls used it for raffle prizes given to those attending shows.
The American card used today in bingo is traced to the 1920s.  The name bingo had been used as a reference to beans that players used to mark winning numbers.
Bingo has maintained a wide popularity due to its simplicity, its almost “pure luck” form, and the fact that it is a very social game that can be easily set up for commercial or charitable functions.

Bill Bennett and Bill Pennington purchased the Circus Circus casino from Jay Sarno in 1974. They immediately transformed a losing property into a “winner,” as they parlayed the investment into one of the most successful casino companies in the world.
Bennett was born in Glendale, Arizona, on 26 November 1924. Following his service in World War II as a pilot, he returned to Phoenix to run a furniture store. Soon, however, a friend coaxed him into investing in a financial firm. The firm went broke and so did Bennett. Luck was on his side, however, as his friend L. C. Jacobsen was president of the Del Webb Construction Company. Jacobsen was looking for personnel who could help in the company’s newly acquired casino properties. Bennett signed on and worked his way up to a top management post with the Mint Hotel in Las Vegas. In 1971, he cashed in his stock options with Webb and entered into a partnership with Bill Pennington. The two established a company that distributed gaming machines to casinos. In 1974, they found Jay Sarno in deep financial trouble, and they helped bail him out by taking over the Circus Circus casino in a lease option deal.
Bennett and Pennington liked the Circus Circus idea, but the two saw that the property was not being managed properly. They first made plans for a tower of hotel rooms and cleaned up many carnival games that at best would be considered sleazy. Circus acts were moved away from the gambling tables. They marketed the property heavily through radio advertisements and dropped Sarno’s notion that Circus Circus could appeal to high rollers. Instead, they nurtured and developed the idea of marketing the property to middle-class patrons—lots of them.  The new owners placed a much greater emphasis on their slot machine department than it had received previously. The property also began sponsoring many sporting events. Bennett was a stunt pilot, and he rode motorcycles and speedboats. Soon Circus Circus had a hydroplane boat on the professional racing circuit.

Bennett and Pennington also reached out to develop new properties. They built Circus Circus-Reno in 1978, and they purchased the Edgewater Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, in 1983. Later they added the Colorado Belle. In 1983, Circus Circus became a public company. Over the next ten years, the stock outperformed all others in the casino gambling field. Values of shares increased 1,400 percent.
The 1990s were good to Circus Circus, although the company was not always good to Bill Bennett. At the beginning of the decade, the company opened the largest hotel casino in the world. The Excalibur featured a medieval court with the knights of the round table. The facility had 4,000 rooms and was built at a cost exceeding $250 million. In 1993, the Luxor, a pyramid-shaped casino hotel with 2,500 rooms, opened, and the next year a Circus Circus casino opened in Tunica, Mississippi. In 1994, several management changes accompanied lower-than-anticipated revenues at the upscale Luxor property, and Bennett was roundly criticized by an organized opposition at an annual stockholders’ meeting. He decided to step down as chairman of the board, and then to leave the company altogether. He sold his stock for $230 million and promptly purchased the Sahara Hotel for $193 million. He knew the Sahara, as it had originally been a Del Webb casino. Now it was aging and in bad repair. Bennett invested millions more in improvements and in the construction of a new tower of hotel rooms.
Las Vegas needs dreamers and builders like Sarno, and it needs people like Howard Hughes, who will purchase properties others wish to get rid of. But it especially needs persons who take others’ dreams and convert them into reality for stockholders and customers. In the gambling industry, Bennett has not been a dreamer, but he has been one who makes dreams come true.

The Bahamas consist of two islands with population concentrations (Nassau on New Providence Island and Freeport on Grand Bahamas Island) and many smaller islands, the closest ones lying about fifty miles off the Atlantic coast of Florida. The country was under the political control of Great Britain until 1973. Tourism has been the dominant product of the islands for most of the past century. The islands’ resorts now employ over 40 percent of the workforce. Casino properties dominate the tourist offerings.
Prior to the 1960s, there was very little gambling in the Bahamas. The Penal Code in colonial statutes declared all gambling to be illegal. In the 1920s, however, the small Bahamian Club opened in Nassau on New Providence Island, having been given an exemption by the governor. Another small casino won an exemption to operate on the tiny island of Cat Key. Efforts to establish major casino facilities had been advanced by Sir Stafford Sands as early as 1945. Sands was a private attorney seeking opportunity, but he was also the minister of finance and tourism for the island colony. The timing was not right, but Sands did not go away.
Sands was still a critical player in island politics in the early 1960s when the Castro revolution in Cuba caused many gaming interests there to look in the direction of the Bahamas. Meyer Lansky was purported to have visited Sands in 1960 with a $2 million offer for the right to have casinos. The offer may have been rebuffed, but soon Sands, in a “partnership” with two Americans—Wallace Groves (a convicted stock swindler) and Louis Chesler (a major Florida land developer and compulsive gambler)—pushed a proposal for a casino in Freeport through the Executive Council. The Monte Carlo Club at the Lucayan Beach Hotel began operations in 1964. A second casino in Freeport—El Casino—opened in 1966. Lansky had a direct interest in the property, as several of his associates in Cuba took management roles. These included brothers Dino and Eddie Cellini, who also shared management in a Lansky-controlled London casino and in a casino dealers’ school that furnished employees for casinos in England as well as the Bahamas. Initially, all casino employees had to be nonresidents, a rule that has since changed. From the beginning, no local resident has been allowed to be a player at any of the casinos in the Bahamas. A local resident is fined $500 if caught playing.
Sands was also instrumental in pulling together the principals who negotiated to establish a casino near Nassau. These included James Crosby and Jack Davis of the Mary Carter Paint Company, Wallace Groves, and Huntington Hartford, a millionaire with grandiose dreams for development of Paradise Island, which was very near Nassau. A silent partner in the organization was Lynden Pindling, whose political party had won control of the government in the parliamentary elections of 1967. It was the first time in the history of the island that the Black party had won an election. The effort to gain a license for a new property included the purchase of the license that had been held by the Bahamian Club.  In 1968, the Mary Carter partnership was reorganized as Resorts International, and they opened the Paradise Island Resort and Casino. The company had to actually move the Bahamian casino building onto their grounds to gain its license. Today the old casino facility is the restaurant within the new casino structure. Resorts International also took over the management of the El Casino in 1978. In 1983, the license for the El Casino was sold to the London-based casino company (Lonhro) that built the Princess Casino in Freeport.
A second casino in Nassau was licensed on Cable Beach in 1978. It operated as the Playboy Casino until 1983. Then the license was transferred to Carnival Cruise Lines, who opened the Crystal Casino; subsequently it has become a Marriot property. In the 1990s, the Paradise Island Resort was sold to Sun International and renamed the Atlantis. Also, the Gentings Casino company of Malaysia purchased the Lucayan Beach Resort. A fifth casino license has been given to the Club Med, which operates the Columbus Isle Casino on San Salvador Island, the location where Columbus first set foot on land in the Western Hemisphere in 1492.
Earlier patterns of organized crime involvement in Bahamas casinos have essentially been eliminated through a process of effective regulation. Moreover, the operators’ connections to other jurisdictions where they must face vigorous checks for licensing preclude connections with organized crime. The Bahamas have one of the most interesting taxation systems for casino gaming—a reverse progressive tax system. The island nation wishes to use casinos to promote tourism. Because the political leaders realize that it is expensive to market gaming to high rollers and persons who will spend considerable vacation dollars in the islands, the goal is to attract players who will stay in the hotels and take full advantage of the beaches and other tourist amenities. Larger properties have a better chance to market to these players. Also, it costs more to bring in such players than it does to advertise to low-roller day trippers who take boats from the Florida coast. Hence, the reverse-progressive tax system. Casinos pay a 25 percent tax on gaming revenues up to $10 million per year. As the earnings go up, the tax rate goes down. For earnings between $10 million and $16 million, the tax is only 20 percent. It is reduced to 10 percent for earnings between $16 million and $20 million. Annual earnings above this amount are taxed at a rate of only 5 percent. Casinos pay other fees as well.

There are several variations of a game called baccara.  The word baccara means “zero” in Italian. The game originated in Italy and developed during the Middle Ages. The game was exported to France, where it became known as baccarat and also as chemin de fer. The latter term means “railroad” and refers to the fact that the bank for the traditional game was passed around the table from player to player. Other variations of the game are called punto banco and minibaccarat.
Although the manner of play in the games varies, the strategy is quite similar. The goal of all the games is to get a series of two or three cards that total 9 in value or as close to 9 as possible. The side that is closer to 9 wins the game. Cards are typically drawn from a six-deck shoe. Cards are alternately given face down to one side, called the “bank,” and to the other side, called the “player.” The cards are then turned over—first the player’s cards, then the bank’s cards. The ace is counted as 1; each numbered card is counted as its value, except for the ten, which is counted as 0; the face cards are counted as 0. When the numbers are added up, 10 (or 20) is subtracted from any number over 9 (or 19). If the player’s first two cards add up to 8 or 9, it is considered a “natural,” and no more cards are drawn for either side. The bank’s cards are revealed, and the winner is determined. If both hands have the same number, it is a tie. If the player’s hand is not a natural, the bank hand is examined to be sure it is not a natural. If it is a natural, there is no draw for the player’s hand. The player’s hand draws another card if the hand adds up to 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. If the player’s hand adds up to 6 or 7, it gets no more cards. Whatever the player’s hand has, the bank must draw if it has a 0, 1, or 2. It stands on a 7, and of course on a natural 8 or 9. If the bank has a 3, 4, 5, or 6, it takes cards depending upon the cards of the player. In the baccarat game played in most casinos today, there are absolutely no possibilities for deviating from these rules. In some variations of the game, there is an option of drawing or standing when the player’s hand is 5.
The games now played find all players betting against the house—against the casino. The players may bet either that the bank hand wins or that the player hand wins. Players receive even-money payoffs if their bets are correct. If there is a tie, neither hand wins or loses. The players may also wager on a tie, however, and they are paid eight to one if the game is a tie.
In some European casinos now as well as traditionally, there would be a double table for baccarat. This game gives the casino dealer a degree of discretion. Three hands are dealt. One hand, the bank hand, is the casino’s hand. Two hands—one for each side of the table—are designated as player’s hands. The casino (bank) competes one-on-one against each of the player’s hands. In this game the casino patron may bet only on the player’s hand at his side of the table. As the player’s hands are revealed (both before the bank’s hand is revealed—except to check for naturals), the casino dealer must then within strict limits decide whether to play in a way to maximize winning against one or the other side of the table. The dealer considers the amounts wagered at each end of the table if choices are possible to draw or stand.
Casinos in the United States use only a single-table baccarat table for games, although players are spread all around the table. In the commonly played game (which is universally played in the United States), the players who bet on the bank and win must pay a 5 percent commission fee on the amount of their winnings. With this commission, that casino maintains a 1.17 percent advantage over the player who bets on the bank and a 1.36 percent advantage over players betting on the player hand. In the European chemin de fer game, the advantage actually belongs to one of the patrons at the table. He or she bets against all other players, who must bet on the player’s hand. That patron keeps the bank as long as the bank hand wins. On each such bank win, however, he or she must give the casino a 5 percent commission on all winnings. It is in this game that the player hand (actually played by the largest bettor against the bank) has the option of standing or playing on a five.
There is also a popular variation of the baccarat game that is played at a small table (the size of a blackjack table). All players face the dealer, who handles all the cards, dealing both hands, turning over the cards of each hand, and making set bets without any options. A minibaccarat game typically allows low-stake bets, whereas the casino baccarat game has gained a reputation for being the casino’s most elegant game, as it has the highest table limits permitted in the casino.
Except when played at the minitable, there is great ritual at the baccarat game.  Cards are turned over by the player (one player in turn represents the player’s hand) with great suspense. The casino’s dealers mimic this style as they reveal the bank’s hand and then draw new cards. Casinos find the highest bets at these tables. The highest rollers to be found in the world gravitate to the baccarat tables of the leading casinos. They may play several hundreds of thousands of dollars per hand. The games are favored especially by the most wealthy Asian and European players wherever they may be found. The games may be separated from other tables by ropes. Dealers wear tuxedos at baccarat tables, but only standard casino uniforms at others. In European casinos where drinks and food are not allowed on casino floors, exceptions are made for the baccarat players.
System players using simple methods, ranging from the Martingale strategy to much more elaborate schemes, also seek out the baccarat tables for their even-money bets, as these tables offer the best odds to players on even-money choices. Casinos compete with each other to win the loyalty of the baccarat high rollers. Gifts of every type imaginable are offered to these special players. From month to month, Las Vegas Strip casinos see their bottom-line revenues go up and down considerably, depending upon how much is played at the baccarat tables and whether or not one or several of the richest players hit a prolonged winning streak. Occasionally, a casino will experience a monthly loss because of a run of player luck at baccarat. This cannot be said of any other game (unless there is cheating). Another attraction of the baccarat table is that the players can act as a social group and bet together—whether on the bank or player—and can cheer and console each other, as the case may be.

The four Maritime or Atlantic provinces of Canada—New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island—joined together in 1976 to form the Atlantic Lottery Corporation. The purpose of the corporation is to serve as a central marketing agency for lottery products in the provinces. An eight-member board of directors is composed of two representatives from each province. The corporation offers several different games, including traditional weekly and daily draws, instant games, and lotto games.

 From my studies and personal observations, I believe that the Asian continent has produced the world’s best gamblers. Persons of Asian heritage attack the games of the casinos all over the world with a vigor and zest not found coming from other ethnic groups. The explanations for Asians’ love of gambling are explored in Appendix A in the section “The Best Gamblers in the World.” Here we consider the irony that the most prevalent religions of the Asian continent—Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Shinto—all frown upon gambling activity. The religious activities have greatly limited the scope of legal gambling that is permitted, although there are exceptions to the rule. Many countries permit lotteries and horse racing. The major jurisdictions—indeed the two most populous countries in the world, China and India—totally ban gambling, however. (The enclave known as Macao is now part of China, and its casino gambling will be reviewed over the next few years by authorities in an effort to decide whether it will stay or go. See Macao.) India has allowed gambling boats, and there are also horse racing tracks and lotteries, but there is no casino gambling.
In the area known as Asia Minor (and the Middle East), Turkey has had casinos since 1969.  The legality of the facilities has been under constant scrutiny, however, and the gambling has not been able to be focused toward any societal goals such as economic development. For many decades before the 1970s, Lebanon offered the finest casino in the Middle East. Internal warfare totally destroyed the entertainment value of gambling in the country. When the Palestine state gained a measure of sovereignty in the 1990s, it authorized a casino that sought much of its patronage from Israeli citizens.
Nepal has small casinos for foreign visitors to the hotels in Kathmandu. Most of their patrons are Indians. The only other casinos on the soil of mainland Asia are in Korea. Casinos have operated there since 1967 as a way to attract foreign capital. Local residents are not permitted into the casinos. Among the foreign patronage are the 40,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in the country.
A government organization in the Philippines runs twelve casinos. Additionally, the organization has contracts with foreign investors who operate private casinos in several large hotels. The Philippines have not been subjected to the religious restraints of most of the Asian countries, as the islands were under Spanish and U.S. control with strong, gambling-tolerant Catholic influences for nearly four centuries before independence came in 1946.
Malaysia offers an interesting casino environment. The Genting Highlands resort, located thirty-five miles from the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, is the only permitted casino. It has been in operation since 1970, with a complex of 3,500 hotel rooms and 200,000 square feet of casino space. Until the Las Vegas MGM and Foxwoods in Connecticut opened casinos in the 1990s, Genting Highlands was the largest casino in the world. (Indeed, when the Pequot tribe of Native Americans wished to build Foxwoods, it was refused financing by every U.S. source because it was too big a risk. The tribe eventually received its loan from the Genting Highlands Gaming Corporation.) As the Muslim faction among the Malaysian population has considerable political influence, it has permitted the casino only under the condition that only non-Muslim Malaysian residents may enter the casino. The Muslim religious organization is allowed to patrol the casino with a police arm. It has the authority to drag out any local Muslims it finds, and the religious authorities mete out punishment.
Japan offers many gambling experiences; however, casinos as such are not permitted. The Japanese government lottery is the largest single lottery in the world in terms of revenues. There is also horse racing. Unique forms of gambling include pari-mutuel wagering on bicycle and motorboat racing. Although there are no gambling halls with casino table games, there are 18,000 gambling halls featuring machines. Most of the machines are pachinko machines (see Japan and Pachinko).

Aruba has been the most successful casino jurisdiction in the southern Caribbean. The island, now an independent nation, lures tourists who enjoy the warm climate along with gaming opportunities. Casinos reach into South America, particularly to Venezuela, for players. Many people also come to Aruba from the United States via the gambling junkets offered by the casinos. The lack of adequate lodging, however, limits the potential for gaming development. Profit margins are small, as expenses are very large. Also the government extracts a 2 percent drop tax, meaning that when a player buys $100 in chips, the casino is obligated to pay a tax of $2. That amount is rather high. In addition, there is a gross gaming tax.
The casinos of Aruba are self-regulated; the island nation has no gaming board. The Ministry of Justice provides inspectors who monitor the doors of the casinos to ensure that no persons younger than eighteen years of age enter.

In terms of legal gambling, Arkansas is best known for the Oaklawn Park horse racing track in Hot Springs and also for a dog track in West Memphis. Yet the real story of gambling in Arkansas involves wide-open illegal casinos in Hot Springs (in Garland County) that operated for over a century with connections to many of the leading mobsters in the land. In the mid-1950s, reform governor Orval Faubus sought to close down the gaming.  Local Garland County judges overruled his efforts, however, and Faubus dropped the issue. After a staunch antigambling Baptist minister was elected to the legislature, the issue was reopened. He pushed a resolution demanding that the governor shut down the casinos. In 1963 the governor responded. After he did so, the citizens of Hot Springs circulated petitions to legalize casinos. The question was put on the ballot in 1964. The campaign for casinos was led by the local chamber of commerce; however, it was opposed by both Faubus and his 1964 opponent, Winthrop Rockefeller. Arguments that the state could experience a financial windfall from casinos fell on deaf ears, and the voters defeated casinos by a vote of 318,000 to 215,000. The doors of the casinos have been closed since then, but the casino proponents keep trying to win public support. In 1984, another petition was presented to the voters. Again, Garland County residents led the campaign. The state’s young governor, Bill Clinton, opposed it. His wife, Hillary, led the campaign against casinos with a statewide speaking tour. Voters said no by a 71 percent to 29 percent margin. In 1996, voters said no again by the same overwhelming margin. This time, the appeal had been not to produce state revenues but rather to meet the competition from riverboat casinos in surrounding states. The dreams of returning to the glory days of gangsters and excitement in Hot Springs remain, but all the gambling is confined to the short racing season each summer.
A proposal was put forth in the 2000 election that would have allowed six counties to have local option votes on casino gambling. The voters of Arkansas defeated casinos one more time.

In 1908, all gambling activity was banned in Arizona Territory in an effort to win congressional support for statehood. By mid-century, the state of Arizona had legalized pari-mutuel horse-race and dog-race betting and had also established active charity gambling operations. The state has also had a lottery since 1991. When Las Vegas Nights were authorized, commercial gambling suppliers actually took slot machines around to the events. The state also permitted the sale of slot machines, and in the 1980s, several businesses were importing used machines from Nevada and repairing and reselling them throughout the country. The businesses were supplying many of the machines to illegal operators, yet the state took no direct actions to stop the sales.
The many Native American tribes of the state were therefore set back when the state refused to negotiate a compact for casino gambling. After several years of legal maneuvering, the tribes won a federal court order mandating negotiations, and in the early 1990s tribal bingo halls were converted into tribal casinos. Eventually over twenty tribes established casinos; the largest ones, in the Phoenix area, are operated by the Ft. McDowell, Ah-Chin, and Salt River Pima tribes.