Three definitions, one score, and the things we refuse to do
The whole method fits on one page, which is deliberate. If you cannot check how a publication reaches its judgements, its judgements are decoration.
The three definitions
Every date on this site is one of three things, and we say which one every time.
Founding
The moment somebody was permitted to open, or first did. A date about a decision. We accept a founding date when there is a named body and a documented act behind it: the Great Council of Venice opening the Ridotto in 1638, the privilege that Spa dates from in 1763, the first play at Baden-Baden on 16 June 1812.
Founding dates are the least controversial and the most abused. A founding date is not a promise that anything continued.
Continuity
Whether the house has kept doing the job since, without a break. A date about a record, and the one that breaks. We treat a span as documented only when we can source both ends. A sourced start and a hand-wave at the other end is not a span, it is a guess with a citation stapled to it.
This is stricter than it sounds and it costs us. Spa's entire record after the ban of 1872 is drawn as unmeasured on our timeline, not because we think Spa was shut for 154 years, but because we have not found reopening dates we trust. We would rather show the hole.
The building
The fabric you can walk into now. A date about stone. It is usually younger than the claim and occasionally, as in Venice, wildly older and completely unrelated to it.
The Continuity score
Each entry carries a score out of ten. It rates how well the claimed antiquity survives checking. It is not a rating of the venue, the visit, the rooms or the welcome, and it should not be read as one. A house can score three and be a wonderful evening. A house can score eight because it never claimed much in the first place.
Roughly, the score starts at ten and comes down for:
- Years the house was demonstrably not operating, weighted by how long.
- A move to a different building, which breaks the thread between the claim and the place.
- A gap between the headline date and the documented opening, especially where an official body publishes a different number.
- Stretches we cannot date at all, which cost less than a proven closure but are not free.
And it goes back up for claiming less than you could. Baden-Baden could shout about 1812 and mostly does not. Estoril says 1931 and means it.
| House | Score | The deciding fact |
|---|---|---|
| Casino Estoril | 8 / 10 | Modest claim, documented opening, no closure on record. Marked down only because continuous operation is nowhere published. |
| Casino Baden-Baden | 6 / 10 | Same 1872 hole as its neighbours, but a purpose-built house of 1824 and rooms of the 1850s still in use. |
| Casinò di Venezia | 4 / 10 | Impeccable founding, 185 year silence, and a different building on a different waterway. |
| Casino de Spa | 3 / 10 | Two bans, a fire, a replica facade, and a regional government that publishes a different founding year. |
| Spielbank Wiesbaden | 3 / 10 | Seventy-seven years dark, and the comeback happened in a theatre foyer next door. |
Which source wins
When accounts differ, and in this subject they always do, we go in this order:
- The owning or supervising authority over the venue's own marketing. The Comune di Venezia over the casino's out-of-date English group page; the Walloon government's 1771 alongside Spa's 1763.
- The regulator or the statute over everybody, for ages, entry rules and licence terms.
- Primary records over travel writing. Travel writing in this field cites travel writing, and after two hops the trail is a loop.
- Where two official bodies genuinely disagree, we print both and name them. That is not fence-sitting. That is the finding.
Things we will not print
- A number with no source, however often it appears. Estoril's slot count is a good example: the figure everybody quotes traces back to an affiliate site.
- A superlative with no metric. "The largest casino in Europe" without a floor area is a slogan, not a fact.
- An award tier we cannot verify, or a Michelin star in a place the guide does not cover or has not given one to. Listed in the guide is not starred. We check which.
- A quotation with no first source. It gets "attributed to" or it gets cut.
- A named chef the operator does not name.
- A hotel, a dress code or an entry fee that the venue does not actually have. Third parties invent all three.
What we are not
We are not a booking service, an agent, an affiliate or an operator, and we do not accept payment from anyone we write about. We do not publish odds, systems, strategies, bonuses or promotions, and we are not going to encourage anybody to gamble. If gambling has stopped being entertainment, the page we would rather you were on is this one.