A short history of casinos and gambling houses

Gambling is one of the most popular recreational activities in Canada today, with a huge number of Canadian citizens counting themselves as gamblers and gaming enthusiasts. Although the invention of online casinos and the wide variety of 888 live casino games available on the Internet has certainly helped to bring recreational gambling back into the Canadian pop culture mainstream, the practice of gambling has actually been a feature of human history and civilization for thousands of years.
Archaeologists report finding evidence that our ancestors played games of chance among famous ruins of many ancient civilizations, and historians have fortunately been able to support these findings with numerous references to and mentions of gambling and gambling-like-practices throughout history. Ancient Chinese texts, dating back to 2300 BC, contain what is believed to be the first recorded instance of gambling, and similar support from ancient Greek and Roman histories support this finding.
Casinos, at least as we know them today, are a relatively recent invention, especially when compared to the games of chance that our ancient ancestors enjoyed, but gambling houses have been around in some form since at least the seventeenth century, when one was erected in Venice, Italy. Some time later, American saloons were home to gambling houses that more closely resembled the casinos we know today, although these saloons also served a variety of purposes in addition to gambling. Saloons served as important meeting places for early American settlers to come together to share news and refreshments, as well as providing an excellent gambling arena.