Cover -- The Gambling Century: Commercial Gaming in Britain from Restoration to Regency -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction: The Gambling Century? -- Playing the Field -- Laying Odds -- Hedging Bets -- Mains and Chances -- On the Money -- Debts of Honour -- 1: Probability and its Discontents -- The Brave New World of Numbers -- Banking on Infinity -- Thinking Magically, Mathematically -- 2: Court to City: Gaming in Baroque Europe -- The Serene Ridotto -- Tolerated, but not Permitted -- The Great Game -- 3: Sons of Hazard: The Sharper in Literature, Media, and Law -- Hazardous Scenarios -- Having At All -- Occam's Wager -- Statutory Fiction -- 4: In the Shade of the Royal Oak: Commercial Gaming by Royal Patent -- The Polyhedral Face of Patronage -- By the Board -- Oaks and Oranges -- 5: Making Bank: The Emergence of Metropolitan Gaming Concerns -- Lawful Recreation -- On the House -- Games People Play -- The Stamp of Approval -- Drawing a Blank -- 6: The Groom Porter's Dodge: The Court and Commercial Gaming -- Grace and Favour -- Slings and Arrows -- On the Verge -- 7: The Bench Versus the Banks: Policing Gaming in Westminster -- Outrageous Fortune -- In Playhouse Passage -- An Information Economy -- Game and Match -- 8: Commercial Gaming in the Wake of the Georgian Statutes -- Parliament Doubles Down -- When a Lady has a Piazza -- Re-Inventing the Wheel -- Ridotto Redux -- Particularity and Deficiency -- 9: The Pilgrimage to Saint James's, or, Clubs are Trumps -- Chocolate Boxes -- The Windows of Brooks's -- One Device to Another -- 10: Harmless Amusements: High Politics and High Stakes -- Vowel Movements -- Reynard and the Hounds -- Game On -- 11: At Home with Faro's Daughters -- A Place at the Table -- Rouleaux and Routs -- Despicable Exhibitions.

12: Breaking Even: Gaming Entrepreneurship at Century's End -- Honourable Debtors -- Turning the Tables -- Polite and Commercial People -- 13: Toward the Victorian Reconfiguration of Gaming, and Afterward -- Drawing Blanks, and Filling Them In -- The Shoes of the Fishmonger -- Select Companies and Select Committees -- The Tragedy of the Common Gaming House -- Rien Ne Va Plus -- Bibliography -- Manuscript Sources -- Printed Primary Source Collections -- Electronic Resources -- Newspapers and Periodicals -- Printed Primary Sources -- Secondary Works -- Index.