ABSTRACT
That the study of gambling was central to the development of probability theory is indicated in the title of David’s history of the subject, Games, Gods, and Gambling (1962).2 Initially, there was no true dichotomy between the more analytical gaming manuals and mathematical work on probability. Early probabilists studied games of pure chance, using simple and widely known gambling games as a starting point and to introduce readers to thinking in probabilistic terms. For example, Louis Bachelier (1901) used simple games of pure chance to make his novel contributions to probability theory more accessible to readers.
