Ancient and medieval games weren't just played for fun, they were fundamental! Often providing some sort of prophetic significance, a guide through life and beyond. Chess for example would have been used to represent forces on the battlefield, often governing how a battle was fought! By the late middle ages games became less and less associated with prophecies and religion, and became more associated with gambling...
Dice and card games started popping up, in Victorian times a moral backlash occurred causing people to associate games with loss and hardship. Games had become a form of moral education tools, with each aspect of gambling being associated with 'evil'. For example Dice are refered to as the instrument of the Devil, with so many ways to trick and cheat people (like shaving the corners of the dice for favoured rolls). In 1784 a pamphlet appeare in London telling readers to "STOP GAMBLING!", as it had supposedly been the cause of all the losses of the country, ofcourse this was a pointless blame. During these times most gambling games had a pure 50/50 chance, compared to todays gambling games, and this lead to people often losing fortunes overnight! Charles James Fox was bankrupted twice at the table, and was famously quoted saying "Winning is the greatest pleasure in life, and losing is the second." Previously, dice had been used to work out your fate (or the will of god) by Druids, as opposed to working out the fate of your wallet.
The Victorian era was also around the time that Britain established the worlds first games industry, with games such as Snakes and Ladders, Ludo, and the Staunten Chess Set leading the way - all of which were adaptations of games from other countries. Snakes and Ladders was once a Hindu game that represented a journey of enlightenment , now 'tainted' by commercialisation. Woolley uses this as one example as to how the 'power' that games once had has been slowly drained by commercialisation.
I thoroughly enjoyed learning about games from the past! My favourite game that was shown in Games Britannia has to be the original Hindu version of Snakes and Ladders; from what was shown during the documentary it looked like a very 'enlightening' and fun game to play! I will delve further into some of these games in future posts, hoping to better understand how gaming in history was used as a tool rather than entertainment.
So long, and keep watching the stars!
I don't know about other gambling games, but I think that the programme only commented on the relatively favourable odds (50:50) offered in faro. However, that asssumes the game was played fairly. There's an interesting article about faro here:
http://jgi.camh.net/doi/full/10.4309/jgi.2006.16.15 The section on cheating (toward the end) is eye opening!