Slot machines
- The three-reel slot as we know it is credited to Charles Fey, a mechanic in San Francisco, who built his Liberty Bell machine in the 1890s. Three spinning reels, a single payline, automatic payout — the blueprint has barely changed in 130 years.
- The nickname "one-armed bandit" comes from the single lever on the side and the machine's talent for emptying pockets.
- Fruit symbols exist because of chewing gum. Early 20th-century machines dodged gambling laws by paying out in fruit-flavoured gum, so the reels showed cherries and melons to match the flavours.
- The BAR symbol is widely believed to come from the logo of the Bell-Fruit Gum Company — an advertisement that fossilised into an icon.
Playing cards
- Playing cards were invented in China, with references going back to around the 9th century, and reached Europe in the late 1300s.
- The four suits on a standard deck — hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades — are the French design, which won out in the 15th century largely because the flat shapes were cheap to stencil.
- A well-shuffled 52-card deck is almost certainly in an order no deck has ever been in before: there are 52! possible arrangements, a number 68 digits long.
Wheels, dice and tickets
- Add up every number on a European roulette wheel, 0 through 36, and you get 666 — which is why roulette is sometimes called "the Devil's wheel". It's arithmetic, not design intent anyone can prove, but the sum is real.
- Dice are among the oldest gaming equipment on Earth. Archaeologists have found dice and dice-like knucklebones at sites thousands of years old, including a backgammon-style set from the Bronze Age city of Shahr-e Sukhteh in present-day Iran.
- The modern scratch ticket is younger than it feels: computer-generated instant lottery tickets appeared in the United States in the 1970s. Our Harvest Scratch borrows the same structure — a fixed prize table with printed odds — minus the money.
- Bingo descends from the Italian lottery "Il Gioco del Lotto d'Italia", which has run since the 16th century; the North American 75-ball version was standardised in the 1920s and 30s.
One fact about us, for symmetry
Every game on this site publishes its full paytable and long-run return next to the play button — 93.59% for Gridrunner Reels, 92.5% for Harvest Scratch, 92.8% for Runes of the North. Real casinos almost never do that at the machine. We can afford to: our coins are worth nothing, so honesty costs nothing.