All because they want you to put your quarters in the slots and pass your chips across the blackjack tables and watch the pretty red and black numbers go round and round and round. Food and rooms are cheap. Alcohol is more readily available than almost anywhere else in America—or so it seems to the tourist. Sitting in the desert, it gulps down water and consumes electricity. Everything seems inverted.

Gambling was popular among ancient Egyptians. New Orleans was the first major gambling center in the USA.
Between 1718 and 1811 gambling grew in taverns and coffee houses with rooms and tables for private gambling. Ancient Chinese also gambled. This did little to actually stop gambling in New Orleans. Eventually fans also began betting on the results. In 1823 gambling was legalized again and a charge of $5,000 for a gambling license was required. Romans were great gamblers but had laws against it. In 1811 gambling was prohibited in Louisiana. Dice may be the oldest gambling device still in existence.

The losses make the gambler more determined to win, he will be determined to not make the most obvious stupid mistakes, just as a sick person is determined to get back to well-being by not going on a binge. Gambling is one of the few activities in life which takes care of both the aspects - the uncertainty of winning and almost certain defeat. Whereas, the wins give him the false impression that he is solely responsible for it and the false hope that he will continue winning. Wins during a gambling session does not excite the gambler as much as the disappointment during the losses, if one were to measure the excitement/contentment and the disappointment by proper scales.

Gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931. Many small casinos began popping up in Las Vegas and eventually in other areas of the state such as Reno, Tahoe, Laughlin, and Primm.
The many motels and hotels and later the huge resorts that characterize Las Vegas now did not come around for another fifteen or so years. The money was to be applied toward hospitals and colleges. From then on large public casinos came to dominate the gambling scene in New Orleans, making it America's first gambling destination city.

The weather was miserable. I was in Lake Tahoe once on some sort of vacation. There were even busses which brought old folks from Sacramento, CA, Pokersnow to the casinos to gamble for the weekend. The lake was beautiful. The main recreation of the other visitors appeared to be gambling.

Know the odds, don't play with money you can't afford to lose, and don't let gambling rule your life.
Casinos make a business of helping people gamble, and assisting them in losing their money. And if all else fails, start a poker night with your friends. Over the long term, most people lose money at gambling, but in the short term, there are drastic fluctuations both up and down. There are also bookies for betting on sports, racetracks for betting on greyhound and horse racing. An entertaining activity, due to a fluke in human psychology that makes people enjoy a bit of uncertainty.

The gambler derives a certain joy in this suffering, the continuous uncertainty which remains the most exciting, if not fearsome aspect of his life. The tendency to gamble probably indicates the subconscious identification of the fact that one can lose everything in the fraction of a second. All the material progress in the world is intended to take care of the uncertainty in life, whereas the all the spiritual endeavours are to take care of the only certain element - the closure of life. Most of the technological advances made by humanity are attempts to limit the uncertainty with regard to health, transportation, communication etc.  However, deep inside the human mind, one knows the certainty of the uncertain flow of events in one's life and that the only certain thing that man is assured of, is death. It also addresses the remote possibility of being able to gain everything which has been lost in a similar time interval.

Gambling being a miniature model of life itself for the desperate and the hopeful ("there is no despair without hope"), one who pretends in that setting is more likely to pretend before everyone including the person who he loves most. Even if he were in dire straits, the proud person upon losing a gamble portrays himself like the General in Dostoyevsky's The Gambler, who in one instance, rises from the gambling table smiling, restraining himself from venting his disappointment. Here I talk about the desperate and the hopeful and not the indifferent because, I believe that  hell is the unbearable state of being indifferent to everything and I am not there yet. For me the pretentiousness in front of the gambling table is the mother of all.

"To gamble is to risk anything of value on a game of chance or on the outcome of any event involving chance, in the hope of profit." --Peter Arnold "The Encyclopedia of Gambling" Collins 1978 "Gambling under the common law is any activity in which: (1) a person pays something of value, called consideration; (2) the outcome is determined at least in part by chance; and (3) the winnings are something of value." --J Nelson Rose "Gambling and the Law" 1986 Gambling Times Inc at page 75 Participation in games of chance.