Casino Games

The Draw of The Casino

Many of the world’s most popular games still exist in the same state they did decades ago. And a sizeable portion of these can be found in the same building: the casino. In these grand, windowless complexes, you could quite easily spend hours, or even days – and blow your life savings while you're inside…! The appeal of casinos is that while the odds are always stacked in favor of the house, there’s still a chance – be it through skill or blind luck – that you could find yourself among the high rollers, being given the keys to the penthouse suite. It’s this possibility – of walking in with a hundred dollars and walking out with a million – that makes casinos so appealing. We all know the thought: that today might just be my lucky day. But the truth is that for every big winner, there are many more losers. Here at Gamepix, we’ve assembled a collection of online games that capture the atmosphere of the casino – but which don’t require that you gamble any real money.

Origins of Gambling

Just about every human society ever recorded has indulged in some form of gambling. The earliest six-sided dice are five thousand years old. Playing cards first appeared in China in the 9th Century. Even poker has its origins in a picture-card game from 17th Century Persia. In other words, for as long as humans have been around, we’ve found ways to entertain ourselves while winning a little money along the way.

Las Vegas: The Casino Capital

The world’s most famous gambling city, Las Vegas, emerged when the American state of Nevada legalized gambling in the 1930s, and the city’s money-making formula has since been replicated across the world. But nowhere does it quite like Vegas – where many of the casinos have become cultural icons in their own right. From Caesar’s Palace to the Bellagio, you feel like you’re stepping into a Hollywood film location as much as gambling den. With the casinos used as locations in movies like Ocean’s Eleven and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas this is a place where you might bump into an A-lister at the roulette table.

The Flashing Heart Of The Casino: The Slot Machine

Real-life casinos are mostly operated by human croupiers – but you’ll find large sections of floorspace devoted to one of the earliest forms of automated entertainment: the slot machine. These devices have been around for more than 100 years, long before the digital microprocessor came to be. And they’ve become more varied and sophisticated as time has gone on. While you can still find a classic ‘one-armed bandit’, modern slot machines come in a huge range. There are touch screens and multi-screen games and they don’t just show spinning lemons and cherries anymore. There are reels in every imaginable theme – from spinning Egyptian hieroglyphs to row upon row of cute and smiling kittens. Every taste is catered for, so long as you have a coin – or, even better, a credit card – to slide into the slot.

Beyond The Slots: Casino Classics

But no casino would be complete without a few of the classic games. Tastes vary across the world, but the ubiquitous 52-strong card deck features heavily. Blackjack is one of the most enduring and popular casino games, largely because of its simplicity. You get two cards – are you going to stick or twist, hit or split? As with all the best games, there are many subtleties to master. Do you know a hard hand from a soft one, an anchorman from a cold deck?

The Wheel of Fortune

In casinos all around the world, you can hear the tell-tale clatter of the ‘pill’ as it bounces around the roulette wheel. Again, this is a beautifully simple game. In essence it’s not much more complex than tossing a coin: heads or tails? Black or red? But as with roulette, there are hidden depths. You can bet on lines or columns, corners or edges, evens or odds. More than any other game at the casino, luck is everything at the roulette table. No matter if it’s your first time at the wheel or you’re an old hand, you need fortune to shine on you.

Poker: The Twenty Million Dollar Game

While roulette welcomes beginners and professionals alike, poker is a game where skill – and practice – are rewarded. This is the reason there are now tens of thousands of professional poker players, playing in big-money tournaments all around the world. In 2019, Bryn Kenney won $20 million dollars in a tournament in London. But – on the other hand – he did have to pay a million dollars to buy in! This is a game that really tests psychology as much as luck. You need to be able to read the other player’s minds while making your own unknowable.

The New Age Of Online Casino Games

The gambling industry has been quick to adapt many of these classics to an electronic format, so that you can play roulette, blackjack and poker from the comfort of your home. Probably the first of these was a version of Blackjack for the Fairchild Channel F, which launched in 1976. Since then, casino games have come on a long way! So if you’re looking for free-to-play games based around those much-loved casino classics, you’ll find them right here. No need to risk a year’s salary on a roll of dice, you can have all the fun of Las Vegas boulevard but with none of life-ruining debt. Imagine yourself striding in past the famous Bellagio fountains – the spotlights moving across the starlit sky – and then head inside the famous hall of light, this temple of risk, the red carpet plush beneath your feet. Pull up a stool at the card table and get yourself dealt in. Are you feeling lucky? Now do you want to stick or twist?