History of Lottery 3.

Lotteries and Sweepstakes were illegal in the United States until after World War II. It was not until the 1960's that the first modern day lotteries began to emerge once again as a way to raise revenue for the state governments in addition to taxes. The first modern state lottery was established in New Hampshire in 1964 and currently there are lotteries in 42 states. State lottery tickets are now most often scanned in large numbers using the new Marksense technology that can take less than a second to check if a certain combination of numbers was picked by anyone even for large multi-state lotteries like the Mega Millions.

Whether to run a lottery is currently the choice of state governments and as such the rues of each are reliant on the state in which they are run. The first US interstate lottery was in 1985 and involved three New England States. Three years later the Multi-State Lottery Association was formed amongst Oregon, Iowa, Kansas, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Missouri, and the District of Columbia and Lotto America was founded. In 1992 this game later evolved into the still enormously popular game, Powerball, now played amongst 29 states. The second biggest multi state game began as The Big Game in 1996 and evolved into Mega Million, currently played by 12 states. Other popular multi-state lotteries include Hot Lotto and Wild Card2.

Hot Lotto is played in 10 states and Washington DC and began in April 2002 in order to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Powerball. Hot Lotto drawings are not televised and are drawn by a computerized random number generator rather than using the traditional ball machine. The record for the highest Hot Lotto prize was won in 2007 and was just under $20 million.

Wild Card 2 is also run by the MUSL and is the second version of the original Wild Card game. It is played in a similar fashion to Powerball except that the sixth "number" is actually one of 16 playing cards or any of the four suits. Unlike other multi-state lotteries, all Wild Card 2 prizes are paid out in cash rather than having an annuity option.

Instant Lottery tickets, also known as scratch offs or scratch cards were first introduced in the 1970's and have become a significant source of lottery revenue. Simple scratch offs require players to match a certain amount of numbers representing the same prize amounts - a winning ticket receives that amount. Scratch cards can be more complicated than this however with many ways to win on one card or with symbols, pictures, or words instead of numbers. More popular scratch offs are adaptations of popular games like Poker or Monopoly or Blackjack or are connected to popular brands like Harley Davidson, NASCAR, Marvel Comics, or FIFA.


The Lottery and the Internet

The Internet has revolutionized the way many businesses are run, and although it hasn't transformed the way the lotteries are run the Internet has modernized the way many people participate in lotteries. Online scratch cards can be played at anytime using Flash and Java applications. This can be more addicting than playing the actual game because it is easily available at any time.

Web-only lotteries have surfaced all over the Internet as well as traditional lotteries with online payments. The numbers are often drawn by the site that runs the online lotto as in the case of online bingo or can be linked to a major real world lottery draw to guarantee reliability. Prize money on these sites can range, like normal lotteries, all the way up to $10 million but often do not exceed that. Many of these online lotteries are offered for free with the price of printing a physical ticket being supplemented in ad sales for the site, making them a viable and tempting option for lottery players. Three popular online-lottery sites that require registration but then offer free games are iwinweekly.com, GuessLotto.com, and iWon.com and are all owned by GTech Corporation which administers almost 70% or the worldwide online-lottery business.

Online lotteries have begun to come into question however, due to the fact that they flourished with less scrutiny than physical lotteries and can therefore be generally less prohibitive. Many sites have developed that offer lottery ticket purchasing services that charge unwarranted premiums on base lottery prices. Additionally regulators are finding it difficult to enforce gambling laws on the Internet and there is no process in place to develop online-gambling laws fast enough to keep up with new technologies and ways to bet online.

History of Lottery 2.

It was not until the late 16th century that the English first began to offer lotteries, the first recorded British lottery being chartered by Queen Elizabeth I in 1566 and not drawn until 1569. The lottery was chartered to raise funds for the " reparation of the havens and strength of the Realme, and towardes such other publique good workes". However this lottery was very different from those previously implemented as each ticket holder won a prize and the total of the value of the prizes given equaled the amount of money raised, thereby making the money raised by the lottery more or less a loan to the government over the 3 years that tickets were sold.

After this first initial lottery, the government sold the rights to sell lottery tickets to brokers who in turn hired agents and runners to sell them to the public, thus creating the forerunner of the modern day stockbroker. Government- run lotteries were managed this way until 1826 when Parliament declared the final lottery. During the period before that however many private lotteries were also held, including one to raise money for The Virginia Company of London to support the settlement in Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America.

Nowadays when we have internet there are many other games being as much popular as lottery like online bingo or online keno.

JackpotCity

JackpotCity Casino is a great Microgaming casino that boasts a great range of exciting and thrilling slot machines. JackpotCity offers an introductory video when the software launches, and it's easy to play slots either for fun or for real money.

Download the software and register and you’ll be given a username for both your Real and Guest account with the site. When you get to the main window, you will be prompted to connect to the casino. Thereafter on entering your password so you can start playing. Personally speaking, the homepage of JackpotCity is a bit packed and in a state of clutter. The main interface has several links which hold diverse information that it’s difficult to decide which one to read first, and it's quite hard to find what you're looking for.

Announcements for new interesting games which become available are given at the main window. An interesting feature is that you can bookmark your favourite games by saving it in your ‘favourites’ folder at the JackpotCity casino software.

You'll find a wide variety of casino and slot games available, and the casino is easy to navigate around. All the games can be previewed which makes it easy to choose which slot game to play next. As a guest player the playing options are quite limited, so you only get a real feel for the slot games when you start playing for money.

The current offer for new players at JackpotCity casino is 500 FREE – in any currency you choose, GBP, USD, EUR, which is an awful lotta money and is sure to go a long way to grabbing a huge jackpot win.

The slot games available at JackpotCity casino fall under four different categories: Video Slots, Reel Slots, Mega-Spin, and Fruit Machines. The games are listed in alphabetical order and it is easy to identify as to which games have Progressive Jackpots. Try playing the Progressive Slot games so that you can win the larger jackpots. The Progressive Jackpot games include the 3-Reel slots: CashSplash, Fruit Fiesta, Lotsaloot, the MegaSpin Progressive Major Millions (this slot game offers the best chance of winning) and many others. Choose from the list of slot games to play by checking the amount of the jackpots opposite it.

Some of the slot games that offer the largest jackpots are: Samurai Sevens, Party Time, Peek-a-Boo, Off the Hook, MegaSpin High 5, Lions Share and the Couch Potato.

In the Video Slots games try out the 5-Reel Drive slot game with a 10,000 coin jackpot, Bars and Stripes with a 50,000 jackpot, Belle Rock with a jackpot of 10,000, Cashanova with a 15,000 jackpot and Cashville with a massive jackpot of 50,000 coins! Also try out Ho Ho Ho, Inca Gold and Isis amongst several other slot games on offer at JackpotCity Casino. There are four MegaSpin Progressive slot games available, and apart from these there are the Double Magic, Fantastic Sevens and the High Five. The Fruit Machines include Pub Fruity, Cash ‘n Carry and Game On.

The Jackpot City casino software is similar to other casino software or online casinos that are powered by Microgaming and operates under Belle Rock entertainment.

History of Lottery 1.

Throughout much of recorded history lotteries have been used as a means to raise funding for public works and continue to be utilized as such today.

The presence of lottery games can be traced all the way back to as early as between 205 and 187 B.C. during the Han Dynasty in what is now China. It is believed that the game Keno, a lottery-like game that is still currently played in modern day casinos, originated at the time. It is thought that even back then lotteries were used to finance government projects, including one of the most famous, the Great Wall of China.

References to lotteries and "drawing lots" have been found in many ancient texts from numerous civilizations from Ancient China, to the Celtic Era, to Ancient Greece in Homer's The Iliad . The first known European lottery occurred during the Roman Empire. At first these lotteries were usually done simply as amusement at dinner parties for the nobility, however during the reign of Augustus Caesar there are records of the sale of tickets for a lottery in order to raise funds for repairs to the City of Rome. However winners were given prizes in the form of articles of disparate value.

It wasn't until 1434 that the earliest public lottery went on record - in the Dutch town of Sluis. And it wasn't until at least a decade later that the first lotteries with prizes in the form of money began to appear in numerous towns in Flanders (present day Belgium, Holland, and France). These first lotteries with monetary prizes were held to raise money to aid the poor and fund fortifications of the towns. These lotteries were hailed as a less painful form of taxation and were quite popular amongst the people. In fact, the English word lottery is derived from the Dutch word loterij which stems from the Dutch noun lot meaning "fate".

Poker History

Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually (but not always) hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown (in some games, the pot is split between the high and low hands), limits on bets and how many rounds of betting are allowed. In most modern poker games, the first round of betting begins with some form of forced bet. The action then proceeds to the left. Each player in turn must either match the maximum previous bet or fold, losing all further interest in the hand. A player who matches a bet may also raise, increasing the bet. The betting round ends when all players have either matched the last bet or folded. If all but one player fold on any round, the remaining player collects the pot without showing his hand. If more than one player remains in contention after the final betting round, the hands are shown and the winning hand takes the pot.

Many poker players feel that this betting system distinguishes poker from gambling games. With the minor exception of initial forced bets, money is only placed into the pot voluntarily by a player who, at least in theory, rationally believes the bet has positive expected value. Thus while the outcome of any particular hand is determined mostly by chance, the long-run expectations of the players are determined mostly by their actions chosen based on probability and psychology.

And what about online poker?

While poker has been played for nearly 200 years, the online version of the game is a recent phenomenon. Online poker has boomed in the past couple of years, and it has forever changed the face of poker.

Other types of online gambling sites were launched significantly before the first online poker room. Online sportsbooks sprouted in the mid 90's. The mid 90's also witnessed the launch of online casinos. For example, Microgaming, a major online casino software supplier, developed its first operational online casino in 1994.

It was not until 1998 that the first online poker room was established. Planet Poker, which has since become a relatively small poker room, enjoyed the status as the sole online poker firm for a short period of time. While Planet Poker has since been overtaken by many other online poker rooms, the initial rake structure it set, 5% up to a $3 max rake, has been mirrored by other poker rooms. So while the industry has drastically changed since 1998, the rake structure has remained fairly constant.

Other online poker rooms soon entered the fray. Paradise Poker was established in 1999 and would soon become the industry leader. During this initial period of entry, the infamous case of Poker Spot occurred. Poker Spot was an online poker firm founded by Dutch Boyd, a successful poker player.

Poker Spot was launched in May 2000. In September of that year, it would become the first online poker room to offer tournaments. However, troubles soon plagued Poker Spot. According to Dutch Boyd, it was unable to collect player deposits from its credit card processing firm. Essentially, all of the money players deposited and played with was not in the system, so Poker Spot was unable to pay its players their winnings. The firm soon went under.

An incident like the Poker Spot case has so far not been repeated by any major online poker room. This is largely the result of the emergence of e-cash. In particular, Neteller has become the dominant funds transfer service for the online poker industry. Neteller has appeal for both users and online poker firms. For users, it allows them to deposit at a poker room without a credit card or wire transfer, and it also allows the user to generally receive quicker withdrawals. The online poker rooms like Neteller because it decreases fraud and has relatively modest fees for them.

It was not until 2001 that the two most dominant online poker firms entered the industry. Poker Stars became a popular destination because of its tournaments, and Party Poker made a splash in the industry.

Poker steadily gained popularity and the industry continued to grow. Paradise remained the dominant firm in the industry until 2003, when Party Poker launched its television advertising campaign. Party's advertising campaign during the World Poker Tour, and its launch of the Party Poker Million were very successful marketing moves that quickly catapulted the poker network to the top. Currently, the network represents roughly half of the entire online poker market.

While Party Poker was spending millions on marketing, one man's $40 buy-in truly put the entire industry on the map. Chris Moneymaker's Cinderella story of winning the World Series of Poker was the type of advertising the online poker industry could once only dream about.

Moneymaker qualified for the World Series of Poker main event through a small buy-in satellite event at Poker Stars. At the WSOP, he outlasted a field of 839 entrants, the largest in World Series of Poker history at the time. He pitted heads against some of the most well-known poker professionals in the world. Moneymaker's first place finish earned him $2.5 million, which is not bad considering it was his first live tournament.

Nevertheless, clearly the most remarkable thing that occurred in 2003 was the launch of a poker information website, www.pokertips.org.

Online poker exploded in 2004. The increasing popularity of the poker and the "Moneymaker effect" resulted in even more play at the virtual tables. Because of this, the industry's revenues more than tripled.⁴ The industry also saw even more entry, with new firms such as Full Tilt Poker and Noble Poker.

Now it seems that the major online poker firms may soon become public companies. Paradise Poker was purchased by Sportingbet, a publicly traded online sportsbook, in October of 2004 for $297.5 million. Currently, other online poker firms are considering becoming publicly traded firms. Party Poker, Empire Poker, and Pacific Poker are all potential candidates for a public offering.

There have also been recent developments in the legal arena. The United Kingdom recently passed a bill that allows for the licensing and regulation of online gambling firms. Whether these online poker rooms soon make the UK their official home, instead of Gibralter or the Kahnawake Mohawk tribe, remains to be seen.