The heyday of cowboy gambling lasted from 1850 until 1910, during which time gambling halls would often be the first building constructed whenever a new camp or settlement was started. Many frontier gamblers have gone down in history for their daring exploits. To be successful, professional gamblers had to have irresistible personalities in order to attract men to play with them. Often dressing in dandy clothes, their success depended partly on chance and partly on skill, sometimes on sleight of hand, and in the Old West, their shooting abilities.

Humans have been gambling in one form or another for thousands of years. Including everything from gladiator fights to political elections, the range of betting opportunities are often as hilarious as they are bizarre. Given that the industry is such a broad church, this begs the question: who has made their way as history’s most famous, and what did they do to accomplish this notoriety?

Of course, we’re going to have to turn back the clock a bit here: from the Wild West to the groovy sixties, famous faces have been playing hands and pulling their best poker faces for centuries. Furthermore, the popular pastime of online gambling has proved itself to be just as legendary, evolving in many ways over the years, with each change more innovative than the last. For example, the industry has leapt from one technological marker to another quite drastically over the last decade and is now very much accessible to everyone.

However, what we’re interested to know is this: who has numbered among the most famous players to try their hand on the felt?

Not Shaken, Not Stirred

Sean Connery is incredibly famous for being what many people would consider the quintessential Bond. What most people don’t know about him, however, is that he made a name for himself as one of the luckiest gamblers in recent history.

Back in 1963, Connery found himself gambling in a casino within the Italian Alps. Placing a bet on 17, Connery spun and lost. Repeating the same bet, he lost again. The next three bets, however – all on 17, were dead on the money. With odds around 50,000/1, this made Connery notorious at the table, on top of his Bond antics. Good luck to any other Bond trying to match Connery’s stature, both at the casino and on the big screen.

Anyone who plays modern online slots or casino games will know that they run on a mechanism called a random number generator. Each game is given a percentage, known as the return to player or RTP, which is a statistic that shows the amount of a players bets will likely be returned to them over extended play. As well as choosing themes that appeal to them, most people factor in the RTP when choosing a slot – we wonder if Connery was aware of his chances before he laid down his money.

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Forget the Burger King

John Montagu played the part of a British statesman and royal. With a long and mixed career in politics and the military, Montagu eventually found his name applied to several islands discovered by Captain James Cook. His most famous feat, however, came from the gambling table.

As the story goes, Montagu was a big fan of gambling, but he hated being interrupted when he had to eat. To combat this cumbersome problem, he is reported to have come up with the idea of placing meat between two pieces of bread. Easy to hold, and easy to eat, this famous food would eventually take a name from his title. As you probably guessed at this point, his title was the Earl of Sandwich. True or not, it makes an incredible story.

Dead Man’s Door

‘Wild’ Bill Hickok made a name for himself in the 1800s as a folk hero of the American Old West. A man of many talents, Bill made his living as an actor, gunfighter, spy, scout, lawman, wagon master, and, among other things, a gambler. If he was around today, his variety of talents might have made him a great YouTuber, albeit of the curmudgeonly old man variety.

Having made many enemies in his life, Wild Bill only liked to gamble if he could do so while seated in a position that let him see the door. One day, he relaxed these rules, playing the odds for one last time. Bill was shot and killed via a single bullet. His hand – two black aces and two black eights – is still known to this very day as a dead man’s hand.

As a pick for the top three, how do you think we did?

Published: 18 May 2020

Written by: BryanL

Some say that gambling is as old as time. And, while we can’t define precisely how old father time is, we know that primitive forms of gambling stretch back to the Old Stone Age. By 3,000 BC, six-sided dice games were being played in the region of Mesopotamia, while first gambling houses were opening up across China during the first millennium before Christ.

Over its millennia-long illustrious history, gambling has recorded a few well know historical figures who excelled at the art of wagering. Although these individuals are today better known for the indisputable mark that they left on world history, their love of the dice has followed their reputation to this very day.

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Here’s a list of some of history’s most (in)famous gamblers:

1. Giacomo Casanova

While we tend to associate Casanova with his potent exploits between the sheets, the Venetian adventurer was also an avid gambler and risk-taker. At 21, Casanova embarked on a career of professional gambling. However, he later pulled out this career path due to his inability to control himself and his urges after each of his wins. Some of Casanova’s favourite games were lotto, basset, piquet and quinze, all of which were popular amongst the upper classes and the aristocracy of the time.

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2. Henry VIII of England

Henry VIII was a revolutionary man in more ways than one. Although he is best remembered for his six wives and his radical shift from a pious Catholic to the founder of his very own Anglican church, the stocky monarch was also a devotee of the dice. Henry was regarded as the most skilled gambler in medieval England and never used his royal status as an advantage, often playing against commoners.

3. Charles II of England

Charles II is another colourful English royal with a noteworthy biography. Unlike his father, Charles I, who was more of a political gambler and whose court intrigues finally led him to lose his crown and his head, Charles II submitted to both the will of the parliament and the delights of court excesses, in the form of gambling and women. This “merry king of England” made games of luck a focal point of his court, some of which spread to the New World, which was being settled during the time his reign.

4. Louis XIV of France

The glorious Sun King of France was renowned for his opulent living. He constructed the megalomaniacally lavish palace of Versailles from where he cemented the authority of his royal regime. Besides spending a great deal of time in his mistresses’ chambers, Louis also enjoyed winding down with a game of cards. Such was his passion for gambling that fixed times were set aside each day for the king to try his luck at gambling. Needless to say, a heap of money from the state coffers was blown on his hobby, contributing to ever-growing budgetary issues.

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5. Marie Antoinette of France

Another great spender of her time was the wife of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette. Although she arrived at the royal court as a timid teenage girl, she soon succumbed to the palace vices and extravagant lifestyle of the courtiers. It is now certain that Marie Antoinette was a problem gambler and was addicted to excessive wagering, all while the majority of the French population went hungry. She was called “Madame Deficit” by the disgruntled masses, and her illustrious royal career came to an abrupt end at the foot of the guillotine, when the revolutionary authorities of the newly established French republic sentenced her to death.

6. John Montagu

John Montagu, the 4^th Earl of Sandwich, was an important British statesman of the 18^th century. He held key positions in the government and the military for most of his life, while dedicating his spare time to his passion for card games. In fact, Montagu was such a passionate gambler that he often didn’t set aside time to eat during his long hours spent around the card table. Accordingly, he would ask his servants to bring him shavings of meat between two slices of bread as a quick snack. Other people, according to this account, began to order “the same as Sandwich!”, and thus the “sandwich” was born.

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7. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky is regarded today as one of history’s most influential novelists. His literary masterpieces, such as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, are viewed today as the epitome of Russian classical prose. Dostoevsky was also an avid gambler, and it is said that he wrote the last section of Crime and Punishment in a matter of days, just to secure an advance payment from his publisher to pay off his gambling debts. His novella, The Gambler, depicts Dostoevsky’s own addiction to roulette.

History is peppered with famous and infamous characters, who in one way or another relished in the allure of dice and cards. Some of these personalities left a lasting mark on the history of their countries and the world. In contrast, their prowess at the wagering table left their names permanently engraved in the annals of gambling history.

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