Sin Cities and the Devil's Games. The Story of Gambling Towns and the Games We Play.

Sin Cities and the Devil’s Games is two books in one:

Sin Cities looks at the most fascinating gambling places in the world. Starting with Venice - where the modern casino industry was born - we follow the path of gambling as each new sin city developed.

This book uses the term “sin city” loosely. For example, there’s a chapter on riverboat gambling, and another on Indian casinos. So, in this book, a “sin city” isn’t always an actual city. The chapter on riverboats looks at what life was like for card sharpers travelling up and down America’s great rivers. And, the chapter on Indian casinos looks at the explosive growth of gambling on reservations.

In Sin Cities, we learn that - given the right circumstances - a sin city can spring up just about anywhere. One sin city is in the middle of a desert (Las Vegas). Another sin city was built in a tiny country that had “eight hundred wretches dying of hunger” (Monaco). Yet another sin city was born in a Portuguese colony in China (Macau).


The Devil’s Games takes its inspiration from the Puritan expression, “Playing cards are the devil’s picture books.” Since the first half of this book is called Sin Cities, it seemed appropriate to stay on the sin and damnation theme!

The Devil’s Games follows the story of all of the most popular gambling games: lottery, slot machines, all the major casino games, bingo, and horseracing. We look at where they came from, and how they developed.


A brief interlude between the two books looks at the practice of tipping, and how that affects casino dealers. Other chapters look at some of gambling tools of the trade. We investigate the development of casino chips, and the birth of playing cards.


Sin Cities is essential reading for anyone that has ever bought a lottery ticket, visited a magnificent casino, played in a bingo hall, or bet on horses, and wondered, “Where did all this begin?”