In other forms, gambling can be conducted with materials that have a value, but are not real money.

Gambling is also a major international commercial activity, with the legal gambling market totaling an estimated $335 billion in 2009. The media and others have used one term or the other to frame conversations around the subjects, resulting in a shift of perceptions among their audiences. 'Gaming' has also been used to circumvent laws against 'gambling'. The word gaming is used more frequently since the rise of computer and video games to describe activities that do not necessarily involve wagering, especially online gaming, with the new usage still not having displaced the old usage as the primary definition in common dictionaries. For instance, in the United Kingdom, the regulator of gambling activities is called the Gambling Commission (not the Gaming Commission).

However, this distinction is not universally observed in the English-speaking world. The two words are not mutually exclusive i.e., a 'gaming' company offers (legal) 'gambling' activities to the public and may be regulated by one of many gaming control boards, for example, the Nevada Gaming Control Board. The term 'gaming' in this context typically refers to instances in which the activity has been specifically permitted by law. The outcome of the wager is often immediate, such as a single roll of dice, a spin of a roulette wheel, or a horse crossing the finish line, but longer time frames are also common, allowing wagers on the outcome of a future sports contest or even an entire sports season. Gambling thus requires three elements to be present: consideration (an amount wagered), risk (chance), and a prize. Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ('the stakes') on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted.

For other uses, see Gamble (disambiguation), Gambler (disambiguation), Betting (disambiguation), and Bets (disambiguation).Ĭaravaggio, The Cardsharps ( c. 'Gamble', 'Gambler', 'Betting', and 'Bets' redirect here.

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