In simple terms, is a card game played with a standard, 52-card deck of cards, in which players bet on the value of their hands. The value of a hand is inversely correlated to the likelihood of that combination of cards occurring, such that three of a kind ranks higher than a pair, and so on. Numerous variants of poker exist, but in all cases players have the option of calling, or matching, a bet, raising, or increasing, a bet, or folding, which means that they take no further part in the hand being played.

Since the early Seventies, when it became the featured game in the World Series of Poker, Texas Hold’em has risen to become the dominant variant of poker worldwide. In casino poker, where a non-playing dealer does the actual dealing, a round disk, known as the ‘dealer button’, indicates which player has the dealer position. The two players to the left of the dealer button post ‘forced’ bets, known respectively as the ‘small blind’ and ‘big blind’, to ‘seed’ the pot and each player is dealt two cards, known as ‘hole cards’, face down.

The first round of betting follows, after which three shared or ‘community’ cards, collectively known as the ‘flop’, are dealt, face up, in the middle of the table. A second round of betting follows, after which two further community cards, known respectively as the ‘turn’ and ‘river’ cards, are dealt one at a time and followed by further rounds of betting. The winner is the remaining player who can form the highest-ranking five-card hand using a combination of hole and/or community cards.

Backgammon is a gambling game but, notwithstanding high-profile tournaments, such as the Backgammon World Championship, which is held annually at the Fairmont Hotel in Monte Carlo, Monaco and offers $250,000 in prize money, is not really a viable proposition for bricks-and-mortar casinos. Traditional backgammon is a board game that can accommodate just two players and requires no dealer, so is better suited to private cash-only contests than regular casino play. A table game, known as Casino Backgammon, did make a brief appearance at O’Shea’s Casino in Las Vegas, in the days before its closure and relocation, but lacked the skill component of traditional backgammon and did not last long.

Traditional backgammon is played on board divided into four quadrants, known as the home, or inner, board and outer board for each player, each of which contains six, alternately-coloured triangles, or points, making a total of twenty-four. A raised ridge down the centre of the board separates the home boards from the outer boards. Each player starts the game with fifteen counters of a particular colour – typically black, or red, for one player and white for the other – arranged on the board in prescribed fashion.

Players have their own pair of dice, which they roll in turn, with the object of moving all their counters into their home board and bearing them off, or removing them from the board. The first player to do so wins the game. A single counter standing alone on a point is known as a ‘blot’; if an opposing counter lands on the same point, the blot is said to be ‘hit’, placed on the bar and must be ‘entered’ into the opposing home board, according to the dice roll on the next turn.