Did you know?

• The first organized poker tournament was held at the Holiday Hotel-Casino in Reno in 1968.
• President William Harding wasn’t a very good poker player. He used individual pieces of fine White House china as poker chips. It’s unknown how many he lost.
• The Mills slot machine of 1910 had cherries, oranges and plums as winners. If a lemon appeared no prize would be awarded. This is why lemon came to mean something unsatisfactory or defective.
• The first World Series of Poker held in Binion’s Horseshow casino in 1970 had only seven players.
• Besides the US, there are 41 other countries that offer legal poker rooms.
• Sports betting can be found in 67 different countries around the world. Some are very small like Benin, in West Africa; others like the UK have enjoyed betting on sporting events for many years.
• Playing cards in India are round.
• The favorite, at horse racing tracks wins fewer than 30 percent of the time.
• No patent can ever be taken out on a gambling machine in the US.
• During the French revolution, because the court cards smacked of royalist, the kings, queens and jacks were remove from the standard deck of cards and were replaced with “nature” (kings), “liberty” (queens), and “virtue” (jacks). The hearts, clubs, spades, and diamonds were changed to “peace,” “war,” “art,” and “commerce.”
• Most cards are manufactured for right-handed players. The pips, or indexes are placed on the upper left hand and lower right corners. Cards for left-handed players have pips on all four corners.