There are touch screens and multi-screen games and they don’t just show spinning lemons and cherries anymore. While you can still find a classic ‘one-armed bandit’, modern slot machines come in a huge range. And they’ve become more varied and sophisticated as time has gone on. These devices have been around for more than 100 years, long before the digital microprocessor came to be. Real-life casinos are mostly operated by human croupiers – but you’ll find large sections of floorspace devoted to one of the earliest forms of automated entertainment: the slot machine. The Flashing Heart Of The Casino: The Slot Machine With the casinos used as locations in movies like Ocean’s Eleven and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas this is a place where you might bump into an A-lister at the roulette table. From Caesar’s Palace to the Bellagio, you feel like you’re stepping into a Hollywood film location as much as gambling den.

But nowhere does it quite like Vegas – where many of the casinos have become cultural icons in their own right. The world’s most famous gambling city, Las Vegas, emerged when the American state of Nevada legalized gambling in the 1930s, and the city’s money-making formula has since been replicated across the world. In other words, for as long as humans have been around, we’ve found ways to entertain ourselves while winning a little money along the way. Even poker has its origins in a picture-card game from 17th Century Persia. Playing cards first appeared in China in the 9th Century. The earliest six-sided dice are five thousand years old. Just about every human society ever recorded has indulged in some form of gambling. Here at Gamepix, we’ve assembled a collection of online games that capture the atmosphere of the casino – but which don’t require that you gamble any real money. But the truth is that for every big winner, there are many more losers. We all know the thought: that today might just be my lucky day. It’s this possibility – of walking in with a hundred dollars and walking out with a million – that makes casinos so appealing. In these grand, windowless complexes, you could quite easily spend hours, or even days – and blow your life savings while you're inside…! The appeal of casinos is that while the odds are always stacked in favor of the house, there’s still a chance – be it through skill or blind luck – that you could find yourself among the high rollers, being given the keys to the penthouse suite. And a sizeable portion of these can be found in the same building: the casino. Many of the world’s most popular games still exist in the same state they did decades ago.

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