Gambling and casinos have a unique place in American culture. The USA is the birthplace of Texas Hold ‘Em poker, the slot machine and the casino resort. Over the years, gambling has influenced and shaped film, music, architecture and even language itself. Despite being federally illegal for a long time, the enduring exception of Las Vegas and the American obsession with sports kept gambling bubbling under as an illicit countercultural institution. Now that legal gambling has returned in a big way across the country, that influence is being felt more than ever.
The neon casinos and bigger-and-better excess of Las Vegas, now transformed into global a sports and party destination, have long exemplified the American cultural zeitgeist. The roots of gambling language go back further to the Wild West, as does the explosion of Texas Hold ‘Em poker – a game that could be a metaphor the sharp-minded ruthlessness of capitalist enterprise. In the very modern era, the rise of prediction markets is turning any event into a betting market and America is it’s biggest customer. These are the ways gambling has shaped culture in the US, and how it will continue to do so.
Las Vegas is the Global Icon of Risk and Spectacle
Las Vegas, Nevada, is the cultural touchstone of gambling for most people. It is capitalism without subtlety, an engineered fantasy land in the middle of the desert where American dreams are built on cards or crushed under the roulette wheel.
Even before the giant replica Eiffel Tower, residencies from pop superstars and Super Bowl-hosting stadiums, mob era Las Vegas was a tolerated indulgence. Films like the Martin Scorsese epic Casino and Ocean’s Eleven romanticized the criminal enterprise that built the city, while the casino’s and performance spaces launched the careers of legitimate international stars like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennet.
There is no denying, despite the well-known seedy underbelly, the Las Vegas Strip is a wildly impressive sight. The people know the house always wins, and that Las Vegas wasn’t built on winners, but still they come to stare at its wonders, as they wonder themselves if they might be that rare winner.
In this way, the casino resorts of Las Vegas serve as a blueprint for giant casino venues and online casinos across the US and globally. Various hotels in Sin City have been, at various times, the largest in the world, and the casinos of the Las Vegas Strip alone now bring in billions of dollars a year in revenues. Let alone online gambling.
For example, the casino gambling experience once required a plane ticket and a resort hotel booking. Today, Las Vegas-style games are available on desktop and mobile devices across the states. But many options means choosing a reliable site is not always simple. Where players once looked to guidebooks and magazines, online resources such as the list of best online casinos at Casino.us are the modern starting point. They help players assess casinos’ game selections, bonuses and payment systems in a crowded market. By presenting this information side by side, users can see at a glance which platforms fit their preferences and priorities.
Gambling in American Vernacular and the Aesthetics of Excess
If there’s one casino gambling game in particular that has influenced American culture more than any other, it has to be Texas Hold ‘Em poker. Here are some common phrases you may or may not know either originated or were massive popularised by poker:
- All-in
- Poker face
- Up the ante
- The finance term “blue chip”
- High stakes/raise the stakes
- Keep your cards close to your chest
Poker has been hugely popular from back in the Wild West days, where fortunes were made and lost in bars and saloons in frontier towns.
After staying underground for many years, it boomed again in the early 2000s when Chris Moneymaker (yes, really) earned millions for winning the World Series of Poker Main Event. His remarkable story started with a $50 online satellite tournament, that eventually earned him his $10,000 Main Event ticket and ultimately millions of dollars. Showing skill, persistence and a little luck could bring the dream to your suburban Tennessee front door.
Today, gambling and poker metaphors are huge in business, sports and even politics. This kind of semantic drift towards gambling across society is also seen in architecture and aesthetics. Perhaps no buildings represent this better than the Trump Hotels owned by President Donald Trump. Who is also the only President to have owned – and bankrupted – a casino. The Trump Organization’s gold, red and velvet aesthetics are heavily indebted to Las Vegas casino culture, although it doesn’t currently operate any casinos.
Casino Gambling is a Fixture of American Culture Now
For Native Americans, giant Las Vegas style casino resorts on reservations have made some tribes incredibly rich. Operations like the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s Hard Rock casinos and the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut’s Mohegan Gaming have changed lives for tens of thousands of tribal members and have bought the awe-inspiring excesses of casino resort entertainment across the country.
Today, casinos are still huge business in the US. Bigger than ever before in fact. While Las Vegas might be suffering from a drop-off in international tourists gambling revenues remain steady. Tribal casinos are growing in popularity and scale every year. Online casinos are now regulated in half a dozen states, while offshore casinos are still hugely popular despite many efforts to suppress them.
It is hard to overstate gambling’s influence on general American speech, music and literature. Today, casino gambling is solidly part of the American cultural landscape, and it is difficult to see that changing anytime soon.
