In a medieval manuscript containing the Book of Games, a treatise commissioned by the Spanish king Alfonso X at the end of the thirteenth century, there is a very interesting miniature. It shows gamblers who, having lost everything they had with them to stake, they use their own clothes as wages. Even if surprising, this act of despair has survived to our days.
Despite its catastrophic results, gambling seems to have been attractive to humans from time immemorial. In every period and place, gambling has been mainly related to games of chance, particularly dice. But not only: card and board games, sports and any other type of games could be the object of gambling.
This is probably the main reason why even games of skill, as for example chess, have been in many historical periods evaluated negatively and even prohibited by political and religious authorities.