A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertainment, such as stand-up comedy, concerts, and sports.
Faro, Pharaoh, Pharao, or Farobank is a late 17th-century French gambling game using cards. It is descended from Basset, and belongs to the Lansquenet and Monte Bank family of games due to the use of a banker and several players. Winning or losing occurs when cards turned up by the banker match those already exposed.
Deadwood is a city that serves as county seat of Lawrence County, South Dakota, United States. It was named by early settlers after the dead trees found in its gulch. The city had its heyday from 1876 to 1879, after gold deposits had been discovered there, leading to the Black Hills Gold Rush. At its height, the city had a population of 25,000, attracting Old West figures such as Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, and Wild Bill Hickok.
John HenryHolliday, better known as Doc Holliday, was an American gambler, gunfighter, and dentist. A close friend and associate of lawman Wyatt Earp, Holliday is best known for his role in the events leading up to and following the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. He developed a reputation as having killed more than a dozen men in various altercations, but modern researchers have concluded that, contrary to popular myth-making, Holliday killed only one to three men. Holliday's colorful life and character have been depicted in many books and portrayed by well-known actors in numerous movies and television series.
James Butler Hickok, better known as "Wild Bill" Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West known for his life on the frontier as a soldier, scout, lawman, cattle rustler, gunslinger, gambler, showman, and actor, and for his involvement in many famous gunfights. He earned a great deal of notoriety in his own time, much of it bolstered by the many outlandish and often fabricated tales he told about himself. Some contemporaneous reports of his exploits are known to be fictitious, but they remain the basis of much of his fame and reputation.
Bartholemew William Barclay "Bat" Masterson was a U.S. Army scout, lawman, professional gambler, and journalist known for his exploits in the 19th and early 20th-century American Old West. He was born to a working-class Irish family in Quebec, but he moved to the Western frontier as a young man and quickly distinguished himself as a buffalo hunter, civilian scout, and Indian fighter on the Great Plains. He later earned fame as a gunfighter and sheriff in Dodge City, Kansas, during which time he was involved in several notable shootouts.
The makeup of poker's dead man's hand has varied through the years. Currently, it is described as a two-pair poker hand consisting of the black aces and black eights. The pair of aces and eights, along with an unknown hole card, were reportedly held by Old West folk hero, lawman, and gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok when he was murdered while playing a game. No contemporaneous source, however, records the exact cards he held when killed. Author Frank Wilstach's 1926 book, Wild Bill Hickok: The Prince of Pistoleers, led to the popular modern held conception of the poker hand's contents.
Luke Lamar Short was an American Old West gunfighter, cowboy, U.S. Army scout, dispatch rider, gambler, boxing promoter, and saloon owner. He survived numerous gunfights, the most famous of which were against Charlie Storms in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, and against Jim Courtright in Fort Worth, Texas. Short had business interests in three of the best-known saloons in the Old West: the Oriental in Tombstone, the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City, and the White Elephant in Fort Worth.
Bret Maverick is an American Western television series that starred James Garner in the title role, a professional poker player in the Old West. The series aired on NBC from December 1, 1981, to May 4, 1982. It is a sequel series to the 1957-1962 ABC series Maverick, as well the short-lived 1979 TV series Young Maverick, and that series' pilot, the 1978 TV movie The New Maverick, all of which starred Garner in the same role. In the two previous series, Bret Maverick had been a solitary rounder who travels from riverboat to saloon looking for high-stakes games. In this series, Maverick has settled down in Sweetwater, Arizona Territory, where he owns a ranch and is co-owner of the town's saloon. However, he is still always on the lookout for his next big score, and continues to gamble and practice various con games whenever the chance arises. The series was developed by Gordon Dawson, and produced by Garner's company Cherokee Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television.
Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith II was an American con artist and gangster in the American frontier.
A Western saloon is a kind of bar particular to the Old West. Saloons served customers such as fur trappers, cowboys, soldiers, lumberjacks, businessmen, lawmen, outlaws, miners, and gamblers. A saloon might also be known as a "watering trough, bughouse, shebang, cantina, grogshop, and gin mill". The first saloon was established at Brown's Hole, Wyoming, in 1822, to serve fur trappers.
The Long Branch Saloon was a well-known saloon in Dodge City, Kansas from about 1874 to 1885. It had several owners, most notably Chalk Beeson and gunfighter Luke Short. The establishment provided gambling and live entertainment, including Beeson's five-person orchestra. It was the scene of several altercations, shoot-outs, gunfights, and standoffs often associated with cattle towns in the American wild west. Most famous was the 1879 Long Branch Saloon Gunfight, in which Frank Loving killed Levi Richardson.
Kitty Leroy was a dancer, gambler, saloon owner, prostitute, madam, and trick shooter of the American Old West.
John Bull (1836–1929) was a little-known yet nonetheless deadly English gunman of the American Old West. He is featured in the book "Deadly Dozen", written by author Robert K. DeArment as one of the twelve most underrated gunmen of the 19th century west.
The history of the card-game poker was developed in the United States at some point during the early 19th century. Since its early beginnings, poker has grown to become an extremely popular pastime throughout the world.
Alice Ivers Duffield Tubbs Huckert, better known as Poker Alice, Poker Alice Ivers or Poker Alice Tubbs, was an English poker and faro player in the American West.
Benjamin Franklin Daniels was an Arizona pioneer, best known for serving as a lawman in rough Western towns and the sheriff of Pima County shortly before his death in 1923. He was also a member of the Rough Riders, superintendent of the Yuma Territorial Prison, United States Marshal for the Territory of Arizona and a miner.
Cattle towns were midwestern frontier settlements that catered to the cattle industry. The economies of these communities were heavily dependent on the seasonal cattle drives from Texas, which brought the cowboys and the cattle that these towns relied upon. Cattle towns were found at the junctions of railroads and livestock trails. These towns were the destination of the cattle drives, the place where the cattle would be bought and shipped off to urban meatpackers, midwestern cattle feeders, or to ranchers on the central or northern plains. Cattle towns were made famous by popular accounts of rowdy cowboys and outlaws who were kept under control by local lawmen, but those depictions were mostly exaggeration and myth.
James H. Leavy was an Irish gunfighter in the Old West. He is remembered today by Western historians for participating in at least two instances of a quick draw duel. In his time, Leavy was one of the most notorious gunmen in the Old West known for challenging other gunmen to a duel. He is featured in the book Deadly Dozen, written by author Robert K. DeArment as one of the twelve most underrated gunmen of the 19th century West.
The history of gambling in the United States covers gambling and gaming since the colonial period.
