Resources for the Game Room & Gaming
Danish Jukebox Archives
This Danish site has one of the largest databases of jukebox history of any site on the net. Whatever you want to know about Jukeboxes you'll find it here. There are links are articles on this site covering everything from an extensive history of the jukebox from 1888 up through 1998, the history of Danish jukebox production, the history of American Juke-Joints, the origin of the term jukebox, the history of coin-op telephone music, extensive biographies of the creators of the jukebox industry, including Albert Dorne, Paul M. Fuller, Louis T. Glass, and Edwin Jensen. Also find a list of the American top 40 jukebox hits and a lot more. If you are interested in the history of the jukebox and its influence on the world, then this Danish site is a must-visit.
An Online Guide to Blackjack
In one form or another, the game of blackjack has been around for at least 300 years. This site traces the history of blackjack from its beginnings in France in the late 18th century up to the modern day, where blackjack is one of the most popular card games in modern casinos. At the end of the history article is a link to the modern day rules of blackjack along with a glossary of common terms. Once you understand the simple rules and the terms you could comfortably play in virtually any casino anywhere in the world. However, in order to minimize the house advantage, there are some simple strategies known as hit/stand rules that can lower the house advantage to virtually nothing, allowing you to play blackjack for hours at a time and seldom lose more than a few dollars. Links on this site lead to additional articles and to online gaming sites where you can play blackjack for real money for, in many cases, play for fun.
GambleCraft
GambleCraft.com is all about gambling: history, rules, analysis and strategy. It has tutorials for learning casino games and provides reviews of popular games, as well as links to software learning and playing games like poker, blackjack, craps, and roulette at home, and a link to read the web pages in Russian. It has other interesting information, such as the history of specific casino games. Roulette, for example, is a French word meaning "small wheel." One legend has Blaise Pascal inventing a wheel and his friend suggesting they use it for gambling. Another legend has a Monte Carlo casino owner inventing it by selling his soul to the devil to obtain the secret - according to that legend, that's why the numbers on the roulette wheel add up to 666. Roulette wheels started appearing in France in the late 18th century. Now roulette wheels are in every casino in the world.
Poker Origins
There seem to be differences of opinion on the origin of Poker. Moreover, there seems to be no clear or direct early ancestor of the game. It is more likely that Poker derived its present day form from elements of many different games. The consensus is that because of it's basic principle, its birth is a very old one. Jonathan H. Green makes one of the earliest written references to Poker in 1834. In his writing, Green mentions rules to what he called the "cheating game," which was then being played on Mississippi riverboats. He soon realized that his was the first such reference to the game, and since it was not mentioned in the current American Hoyle, he chose to call the game Poker. Yet another possible explanation for the word poker, is that it came from a version of an underworld slang word, poke, a term used by pickpockets. Cardsharps who used the 20-card cheating game to relieve a sucker from his poke may have used that word among themselves, adding an "r" to make it "poker."
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