Definition
The act or practice of playing games for stakes or wagers, where two or more persons agree to risk money or something of value on a contest or chance, with the winner taking the stake to which all parties have contributed. Gaming requires three elements operating together: consideration (the stake risked), chance (the game or contest), and a prize (the stake received by the winner).
In legal usage, gaming and gambling are functionally synonymous, though some statutes and courts have drawn narrow distinctions. Gaming has historically been treated as a contract — an agreement between parties to abide by the rules of a game and accept the outcome — rather than as an inherently criminal act. As Bouvier notes, gaming is not an offense eo nomine (by name alone); its legality depends entirely on the regulatory framework surrounding it.
Modern usage has expanded the term considerably. Gaming now appears in two distinct legal contexts:
1. Traditional gaming/gambling: Wagering on games of chance or skill for money or prizes, regulated under state gambling statutes, tribal gaming compacts, and federal law (particularly the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988).
2. Regulatory and commercial gaming: The licensed, institutionalized form of wagering conducted at casinos, racetracks, lotteries, and online platforms — distinguished from illegal street gambling by the presence of state authorization and oversight.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The playing of a game; in contemporary usage, often an ellipsis for videogaming. Also used colloquially to mean careful, strategic use of rules to achieve a purpose (as in "gaming the system").
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act or practice of playing games for stakes or wagers; gambling.
The gap here is substantial and has widened sharply. In 1913, common and legal usage were nearly identical — gaming meant gambling. Today, common usage has largely decoupled gaming from wagering altogether; to most contemporary speakers, gaming simply means playing video games or other recreational games with no money at stake. Meanwhile, the legal term has moved in the opposite direction: in statutory and regulatory contexts, gaming has become a formalized, quasi-technical term for licensed, authorized wagering activity. Researchers working across historical and modern sources must be alert to this divergence — a statute or opinion using "gaming" before the mid-twentieth century almost certainly means gambling, while a modern regulatory text using the same word may refer to a comprehensive licensing regime with no implication of illegality.
Common Confusion
Gaming vs. Gambling: In ordinary speech these are interchangeable, and most historical legal dictionaries treat them as synonyms. In modern statutory law, however, the distinction can be operative. Many jurisdictions adopted the term gaming precisely to distinguish licensed, regulated wagering (legal gaming) from unlicensed wagering (illegal gambling). The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act uses gaming throughout to describe the authorized activity conducted under tribal-state compacts. Courts in some jurisdictions have refused to read the two terms as legally equivalent when a statute uses both. Researchers should not assume synonymy when both terms appear in the same statutory text.
Gaming vs. Lottery: A lottery involves the sale of chances by an organizing entity that retains a portion of the pool. Gaming in the traditional sense involves direct wagering between participants. Many states regulate lotteries and gaming under entirely separate statutory schemes. See LOTTERY.
Why It Matters in Research
The term gaming presents a significant chronological trap. Sources before roughly 1950 use gaming interchangeably with gambling, almost always in a prohibitory or penal context. Sources after 1970 — and especially after 1988 — increasingly use gaming as a term of art for authorized, regulated wagering, often with a deliberately sanitizing intent. A researcher pulling nineteenth-century cases on gaming prohibitions and modern tribal gaming compact disputes will be reading the same word in nearly opposite regulatory postures.
The corpus contains substantial material on both phases. For the earlier period, look to state criminal codes, common-law nuisance doctrine, and Sunday laws — gaming houses were routinely prosecuted as public nuisances, and wagering contracts were unenforceable at common law in most jurisdictions. For the modern period, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (25 U.S.C. §§ 2701–2721) is the dominant federal framework and introduces its own classification system (Class I, II, and III gaming) that has no counterpart in common-law sources.
Jurisdictional variation in this area is extreme. Some states operate full commercial casinos; others maintain near-total prohibition. Tribal gaming operates under a separate federal overlay that supersedes state law in significant respects. Historical sources from English law — including the material in Rapalje & Lawrence referencing the Game Laws — address an entirely different subject (the preservation of wild game and poaching offenses) and should not be read as bearing on wagering law without careful attention to context.
Researchers should also note that wagering contract enforceability was the primary legal battleground in the nineteenth century. Gaming debts were generally unenforceable, and many states had specific statutes voiding gaming contracts and permitting losers to recover stakes already paid. The modern regulatory turn has complicated this picture: enforceable contracts now arise in licensed gaming contexts in ways the historical sources could not anticipate.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) defines gaming as an agreement to play for a stake, emphasizing the contractual structure and the chance element. The second edition adds case citations confirming that the definition was applied to card games, dice, and similar games of hazard.
Bouvier's Law Dictionary provides the most useful analytical framing, distinguishing gaming as a contract from gaming as a criminal offense: gaming is not illegal eo nomine, and without a prohibitory statute, a gaming agreement may be enforceable under natural equity. Bouvier's observation that there is nothing in gaming contrary to natural equity was a notable position — it grounded legal analysis in the contract rather than in morality, and it tracked the common-law baseline that gaming debts were unenforceable by statute, not by inherent invalidity.
Rapalje & Lawrence's material on gaming is not useful for wagering law — the excerpted content addresses English Game Laws regulating hunting and poaching, a wholly distinct subject. This is a significant trap in the corpus: the heading gaming in English legal sources may refer to either subject depending on context and era.
None of the historical dictionaries anticipate the regulatory transformation wrought by twentieth-century casino licensing or the federal tribal gaming framework. Researchers relying solely on these sources will miss the modern structural picture entirely.
Jurisdictional Note
Gaming law is among the most jurisdiction-specific areas of American law. State authority over gambling is broad under the police power, but tribal gaming on Indian lands is governed by federal law under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which limits state authority and requires tribal-state compacts for Class III gaming. Researchers should identify the jurisdictional frame — state commercial, tribal federal, or offshore/online — before applying any source, as doctrine from one context transfers poorly to another.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Gambling and Gaming Regulation; Indian Gaming Regulatory Act; Wagering Contracts.