The Casino, Card and Betting Game Reader: Communities, Cultures and Play

by Mark R. Johnson (Editor)

Overview

Casino games and traditional card games have rich and idiosyncratic histories, complex subcultures and player practices, and facilitate the flow of billions of dollars each year through casinos and card rooms, and between professional players and amateurs. They have nevertheless been overlooked by game scholars due to the negative ethical weight of “gambling” – with such games pathologized and labelled as deviance or mental illness, few look beyond to unpick the games, their players, and their communities.

The Casino, Card and Betting Game Reader offers 25 chapters studying the communities playing these games, the distinctive cultures and practices that have emerged around them, their activities and beliefs and interpersonal relationships, and how these games influence – both positively and negatively – the lives and careers of millions of game players around the world. It is the first of a new series of edited collections, Play Beyond the Computer, dedicated to exploring the play of games beyond computers and games consoles.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501347252
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/30/2021
Series:	Play Beyond the Computer , #1
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.12(d)

About the Author

Mark R Johnson is a Lecturer in Digital Cultures at the University of Sydney, Australia. His work is focused on video game live streaming on Twitch.tv, as well as esports and competitive gaming, gamblification and digital gambling, procedural content generation, and game design. He is also an independent game developer noted for the game Ultima Ratio Regum, and a regular games writer, blogger, and podcaster.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why Study the Casino and the Card Room? (Dr Mark R Johnson, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
Section I: Foundations
1. From Cards to Casinos: The Material Origins of Gambling in the Renaissance (Dr Kelli Wood, University of Michigan, US)
2. Playing Games with Money: Gambling Games in the Late Capitalist Cultural Milieu (Dr James F Cosgrave, Trent University, Canada)
3. To Skill, Perchance to Win: How Chance and Skill Have Coexisted in Gambling History (Dr David Schwartz, University of Nevada Las Vegas, US)
Section II: Poker
4. Poker's Memory Work: Benny Binion, the WSOP, and the Nostalgic Construction of Las Vegas History (Dr Alex Kupfer, Vassar College, US)
5. Poker Fictions: Possible Worlds and the Twenty-First Century Poker Novel (Dr Paul Wake, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)
6. Be a Pal: Representations of Homosocial Poker Play on Television Sitcoms (Dr Danielle Seid, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, US)
7. "Where the Action is"? Branded Poker and the Futures of Digital Play (Dr Fiona Nicoll, University of Alberta, Canada; Dr César Albarrán-Torres, Swinburbane University of Technology, Australia)
Section III: Money and Class
8. Banking Games, Speculation, and the Normalization of Finance (Dr Joyce Goggin, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
9. Pitch and Toss: Working Class Cultures of Gambling in 19th and early 20th Century Britain (Dr Graham Taylor, University of the West of England, UK)
10. Selves in Play: Pop-up Casinos and Discontinuous Persons in Greece (Dr Thomas Malaby, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, US)
Section IV: Casino Cities
11. Monte Carlo's Wheel of Fortune: The Social Impact of Risk, Reward, and Roulette on Visitors to Monaco's Legendary Casino, 1863-1914 (Dr Robert W Miller, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, US)
12. What the Statistics do not say: the Reinvention of Casino Games in Macau since 2002 (Dr Xavier Paules, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France)
13. The Gambling Experience of Monte Carlo in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Paul Franke, Max-Planck Institute and Humboldt-University of Berlin, Germany)
14. Gaming as Cultural Heritage: The Case of Venice (Marta Soligo, University of Nevada Las Vegas, US)
Section V: Spaces and Times
15. Cultural Continuity of Gambling: Native American Ancestral Traditions and Contemporary Practice on the Columbia Plateau (Dr Laurie Arnold, Gonzaga University, US)
16. On the Infrastructure of Gaming: The Case of Pachinko (Keiji Amano, Seijoh University, Japan; Dr Geoffrey Rockwell, University of Alberta, Canada)
17. Backyard Casinos: The Expanding Gaming Landscape in America's Neighborhoods (Dr Rex J Rowley, Illinois State University, US)
Section VI: Cinema, Art, Literature, and Culture
18. Filming High Stakes Poker: Geopolitics, Bluffing, and the Adaptation of Casino Royale (Dr Cynthia Cravens, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, US)
19. The Images and Places of Gambling in Popular Music (Matias Karekalas, University of Helsinki, Finland)
20. From Parasite to Antihero: Shifting Depictions of the Cardsharp (Dr James Banks, Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
21. Gambling Ladies: The Games that Barbara Stanwyck Plays (Dr Catherine Russell, Concordia University, Canada)
Section VII: Gods And Nobility
22. Honorable Risks and Dishonorable Certainties: Naiveté and Cynicism at Play over the Card Table in Imperial Russia (Dr Ian Helfant, Colgate University, US)
23. An Enchanting Witchcraft: Masculinity, Melancholy, and the Pathology of Gaming in Early Modern London (Dr Celeste Chamberland, Roosevelt University, US)
24. The Market and the Conclave: Gambling on Political Events in Renaissance Italy (Dr John M Hunt, Utah Valley University, US)

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Mark Johnson has collected a valuable primer of identities, cultures, and interactions in game and gambling play in The Casino, Card and Betting Game Reader. This collection is a must-read for anyone curious about the role of money in ludic activities across time and space.” —Brett Abarbanel, Director of Research, International Gaming Institute, University of Nevada - Las Vegas, USA

“At a moment when “gamification” has become a marketing buzzword, this volume of essays is as illuminating as it is essential. The rich historical, socio-cultural and subcultural knowledge in this edited collection provides a genuinely new lens through which to understand enduring and diverse connections between games and money in spaces of everyday life.” —Fiona Nicoll, author of Gambling in Everyday Life (2019)

From the Publisher