Whether you visit land-based venues, play online or at home with friends and family, gambling games are a hugely entertaining social activity.
A night out at a casino or bingo hall is a great way to spend a few hours while logging onto your favourite gambling website is also immense fun.
It is a similar story at home, with gambling games forming the basis for lots of laughs whenever people get together with each other.
Read on as we take a closer look at some of the most popular social gambling games and assess why people love to play them.
Bingo
Playing bingo with friends has historically been a popular social activity for millions of people around the world.
Bingo has been around since the 1500s but didn’t truly crossover into the mainstream until after the Second World War.
It subsequently became the main form of entertainment for working-class people, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom.
However, a shift in consumer habits towards the 20th century sparked a massive decline in bingo’s fortunes, before technology helped it to boom once again with online bingo sites.
Online bingo has become a worldwide phenomenon, helping to re-establish the game’s popularity and opening it up to an entirely new demographic.
The social element of bingo has played a significant role in its resurgence, with players able to interact with each other via chatrooms.
With the possibility of Virtual Reality (VR) tech being used in the future, bingo looks set to retain its status as a popular social gambling game for many years to come.
Slots
Slot machines are another form of gambling that was popularised during the second half of the 20th century, and they remain in vogue today.
The 1980s were undoubtedly a boom time for the genre, with the progression from mechanical to video tech sparking an explosion in the industry.
Slots became the dominant force in casinos and amusement arcades, accounting for the most significant proportion of their revenues.
Their popularity has not diminished since then, with advancements in tech allowing slots to retain their global appeal.
The increasing prevalence of online slots has played its part in this, with millions of people regularly playing their favourite games on the internet.
This has served to keep slots at the forefront of brick-and-mortar venues, with friends and family often organising nights out at casinos or arcades as a way of socialising.
Whether you dream of winning a big jackpot or simply enjoy the fun element, slots remain one of the best social gambling games around.
Poker
Poker was often viewed as a game played in smoky rooms by crooks, before television coverage and online sites opened it up to the masses.
The successes of Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer at the World Series of Poker in 2003 and 2004 went a long way to changing the public perception of poker.
It quickly became seen as a game that anyone could learn and subsequently led to
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