The term “gaming” when used in relation to gambling, means gambling activities that have been permitted by the laws the govern a specific area. Gambling refers to the act of wagering money or something that has substantial material value on an event with a random outcome with the desire of acquiring additional cash or material assets. It is this random factor that attracts people to gamble; it is undeniably exciting to bet on something that one has little or no control over, not to mention the ease in acquiring additional material goods.

For more than two hundred years, people have spent a substantial amount of time and resources on the various forms of gambling; so much, that some cultures and religions have restricted or else forbidden gambling entirely.

Although most religions mostly disapprove of gambling, some are more tolerant of it. Jew and Catholic traditions for example, have set asides special days for gambling while some Islamic nations have forbidden it.

In regions, gambling is being heavily restricted and regulated through licensing, though this move has spawned myriad illegal gambling operations. There are areas though that are nearly wholly dependent on the revenues that gambling brings them. Examples are Nevada, Macau, and Monaco.

In the United States, under the country’s federal law, gambling is legal and its individual states are at a liberty to regulate or ban the pastime. Below is a list of several areas in America where gambling has been legalized:

·         Nevada – the state in which Las Vegas, the world’s largest gambling center is located, has legalized the practice since March 19, 1931.

Initially, due to a nationwide anti-gambling crusade, the practice was outlawed in the state in 1909 but was again legalized in 1931 due to the Great Depression and the subsequent decay in mining revenues and agricultural output it brought. During that period, supporters of the practice thought this was just a stopgap solution until the nation’s economy stabilized. However, re-outlawing the gaming industry in Nevada has never been considered. The industry has been, up to the time of this writing, the state’s primary source of income.

·         Atlantic City, New Jersey – legalized gambling in 1976.

The gaming industry Atlantic City has found a lucrative niche that the area is peppered with casino resorts, among them the Trump Plaza and the Atlantic City Hilton. More casino resorts are being planned. These are:

1.     MGM Grand Atlantic City – nicknamed as “City Center East,” the project will be a 60-acre resort and will be the tallest and biggest in Atlantic City. It will have three towers and will have more than 3,000 rooms and suites. It will also have a convention center, restaurants, a spa, a 500,000-square foot mall and a 1,500-seat center. The complex will have the largest casino area in the state, which is planned to have 200 table games, a poker room, and 5,000 slot machines. Construction will begin this year and it will be operational by 2012.

2.     Pinnacle Entertainment – will be erecting a casino on eighteen oceanfront acres. It is estimated to cost $1.5-2 billion and will be operational by 2011.

3.     Morgan Stanley – has plans to build a resort casino that has an estimated cost of over $1 billion.

·         Tunica, Mississippi – legalized gambling in 1990

·         Indian reservations – a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1987 has allowed Native American tribes to build their own casinos on tribal lands as means to provide income for their tribes. Tribes are treated by the United States as sovereign nations though, so as such, they are exempt from laws that ban gambling. Gambling in these areas is instead regulated by federal law.

The story of the Native American gaming industry began when in 1979, the Seminole tribe constructed and operated a high-stakes bingo establishment in their reservation. The state of Florida attempted to close the enterprise but was thwarted in the courts. In the ‘80s, the case of California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians firmly entrenched the right of reservation to open gambling establishments. Finally, in 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which allows Native American tribes to construct and operate gaming facilities on their land as long as the states in which their reservations are located allow the gambling. At present, myriad Native American Casinos are used as attractions to draw tourists and income to reservations.

However, lottery, a form of gambling that involves drawing of lots to determine who gets the prize, has been legalized in almost all of the states in America. 

As the element of randomness is of course, present in all forms of gambling, laws have been promulgated requiring that the probabilities in gaming machines be statistically random to pre-empt manufacturers and owners of gambling establishments from making the chances of getting high-payoffs nil.