The Economist's Primer on Gaming in America
Posted: July 12, 2010
“PINPOINTING a precise moment when the world changes is never easy, even in retrospect. Yet it is possible to say with relative confidence that the world of gambling was changed dramatically by events around a green felt table at Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas on May 23rd 2003, the final day of that year’s World Series of Poker (WSOP).”
The above paragraph begins an 11-part series in the July 8 edition of The Economist that provides an entertaining and interesting picture of the gaming industry in the United States. The author attributes the 2003 WSOP victory of amateur Chris Moneymaker over professional Phil Ivey as the event that catapulted gaming into the mainstream of American entertainment.
The report includes interesting tidbits – an excavation of a bronze-age city in south-eastern Iran turned up a pair of dice dating back nearly 5,000 years – and covers gaming from the psychology behind the desire to gamble in a section titled “The Risk Instinct” to an explanation of how slot machines work in the “Cutting Off the Arms” section.
To learn even more about the gaming industry, please contact the American Gaming Association for information and resources.
