Where Casino Games Get Their Names

Ever wonder where casino games get their names? Nowadays, most of the casino games are named by the company that invents them. Someone at Shufflemaster decided “Hey, here’s a poker game where you can choose to fold your hand or let your bet ride, let’s call it ‘Let It Ride Poker’!”

Games like 3-Card Poker are simply descriptive of the game and require little imagination, but what about Spanish 21? The game’s creator Richard Lofink claims he named the blackjack variation that way because the game uses a Spanish deck of just 48 cards (10s are removed).

What about the most famous and popular casino games like blackjack, craps, and roulette? Those casino games carry a unique history that we’re about to explore in more detail.

Blackjack

The history of blackjack can be traced back many centuries. And how the game of blackjack got its name is right out of the history books.

Most gambling scholars now consider the direct ancestor of blackjack, a 17th century French card game known as Vingt-et-Un, or Twenty-One (21) in French.

Vingt-et-Un closely resembled blackjack. Its goal was to obtain a total of 21 using the same ranking system employed by contemporary blackjack.

In the French version, only the dealer was allowed to double the bet, although betting took place after each round of dealing as in today’s game. When Vingt-et-Un crossed the English Channel, the British gave it the nickname “blackjack” because the winning combination of a Jack and an Ace of spades earned a special payout

Craps

In the early 1800s, French settlers brought a dice game called Hazard, to Louisiana. In Hazard, the term for a losing pair of 1s was a French word “crabs”.

Although no one knows for sure where the term “craps” came from, I can certainly see other non-French settlers saying “crabs? Losing is the craps, not the crabs”. And somehow that name caught on.

Roulette

The popular gaming wheel also has roots all the way back into the 1700s. Just like the other popular casino games we know today, Roulette derived its name from the French.

The game was developed from an early game called Roly-Poly that allowed players to bet on black and white bars.

The modern wheels that we know today were first seen in 1796 Paris. The French, not wanting to over-complicate their version of the game, named the game “Roulette” or French for “little wheel”.