Gambling in Wyoming

Now, Wyoming sure isn't Nevada, you're not going to drive through the state and pop into a gas station with slot machines.

The 2017 World Series of Poker is underway in Las Vegas. To celebrate, here's a look back at the luckiest gambler in Wyoming history. Of all the card games ever played in the Cowboy State, and there have been many, the stakes were never higher than a legendary poker game at a Douglas saloon in 1906...

Yesterday, we published a list ranking Wyoming's Five Best Poker Players. We left one name off the list because he no longer lives here. However, there is one Cowboy State native who owns a World Series of Poker bracelet. Joe Cassidy was born and raised in Cheyenne...

Wyoming's love affair with poker began before it became a state. When the railroad first arrived in the late 1860s, gambling was considered an honorable profession. Many famous figures from the wild west plied their trade in card rooms across the Cowboy State, including Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok...

Of all the card games ever played in Wyoming, and there have been many, the stakes were never higher than a legendary poker game at a Douglas saloon in 1906. George Pike came to Wyoming in the late 1880s after following a cattle drive north from Texas...

In 1888, two years before Wyoming officially became a state, Crook County Representative Tom Hooper famously told the Territorial Legislature, "Show me the man who will not gamble in some way and I will show you an imbecile." Indeed, gambling has been a popular past time here in the Cowboy State ever since the railroad arrived nearly 150 years ago...