Tag Archive: South Dakota

Thanks to Native Americans being perceived as taking advantage of the ability to gamble on tribal lands, the US government introduced a new classification process. Class I is for Native Americans and deals with traditional games on their own lands. Class II is for bingo machines, including scratch cards and some lotteries. Finally, the Class III games are the slots you can find in any Las Vegas casino. Unlike the Class II games, the Class III games make use of a random number generator.

The American Wild West was certainly wild. Settlers moving westwards across the US would stake land claims and then defend them against all comers. In order to maintain some semblance of law and order, US Marshals kept an eye on frontier towns. One of these was a larger than life character, Wild Bill Hickok. Though immortalised thanks to Hollywood, he's probably best known today among gamblers, thanks to the hand of cards he was said to of been holding when he died playing poker in Deadwood.