Gaming

The act or practice of playing games for stakes or wagers; gambling; the playing at any game of hazard. An agreement between two or more persons to play togetherat a game of chance for a stake or wager which is to become the property of the winner, and to which all contribute. Gaming is an agreement between two or more to risk money on a contest or chance of any kind, where one must be loser and the other gainer.

5 Sneed, 507.

In general, the words “gaming ” and “gambling, ” in statutes, are similar in meaning, and either one some event unknown until it occurs, something of value is, as the conclusion of premises agreed, to be transferred from a loser to a winner, without which latter element there is no gaming or gambling. Bish. St. Crimes, § 858. “Gaming” implies, when used as describing a condition, an element of illegality; and, when people are said to be “gaming,” this generally supposes that the “games” have been games in which money comes to the victor or his backers. When the terms “game” or “gaming” are used in statutes, it is almost always in connection with words giving them the latter sense, and in such case itis only by averring and proving the differentia that the prosecution can be sustained. But when “gaming” is spoken of in a statute as indictable, it is to be regarded as convertible with “gambling.” 2% Whart. Crim. Law, § 1465). “Gaming” is properly the act or engagement of the players. If by-standers or other third persons put up a stake or wager among themselves, to go to one or the other according to the result of the game, this is more correctly termed “batting.”