Do you know why the chips used in casinos were invented?

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There is hardly a person on the planet who has not played some form of gambling with chips - be it in a casino or during a home game, every "mosquito" lover has touched chips and knows that they are used to calculate the value of the means available to each player. But have you ever wondered why chips are needed and not directly using money to bet?

The answer is rooted in the deep past. And no - it's not about a few decades, or even a few centuries. The reason every casino uses chips today is because they were introduced in ancient Rome, and the reason is the legislation passed in the largest empire on the European continent.

There are many signs in Greek and Roman ancient history that Greeks and Romans were crazy about gambling and gambled at every convenient moment in various forms. Historical sources for this date back to around 500 BC, and the problem was so serious that gambling in the form of money exchange was completely banned in the territory of the Roman Empire. What's more, the fine was severe, with the authorities having the right to collect 4 times the value of the bet from anyone caught "in the act" of betting for money.

However, this has not stopped people from gambling at all. On the contrary, the ban only makes them more creative. This led to the invention of chips – coin-like tokens that people exchange for money. The goal - when caught, the authorities can't do anything because the chips have no monetary value on them, and the "players" claim they're not playing for money, they're collecting chips. Of course, the "scheme" gained serious popularity throughout the Empire, and the chips were also banned after a while, but the gambling industry had already gained momentum and could not be stopped.

Subsequently, chips were implemented by casinos in the 18th century, being called "tokens", and their purpose was slightly different - in addition to knowing the monetary value, they also knew who the chips belonged to. Therefore, chips of different colors and different values were distributed. Since then, chips have been an indispensable part of every casino, with thousands of designs existing, but the shape is one - the classic circle, used even by the subjects of the Roman Empire.