About this app
About Banana Rock
Neither company has announced plans to seek an online betting licence in North Africa. The deal nevertheless highlights the divide in Morocco’s gambling market.
Land-based gambling can attract international investment. Cirsa expanded its Marrakech presence last November. Private online betting has no equivalent licensing route.
Cirsa’s own IPO prospectus is blunt about it: “Online gaming only exists for betting, which is operated by a state agency,” it says of Morocco, adding that online casino games “are not allowed”.
What is Banana Rock?
Cee-lo—derived from sì wǔ liù (Chinese for “four-five-six”)—is played with three six-sided dice. Popular among Chinese-American players as early as 1893, it was adopted by hip-hop culture in the late 1970s and became a fixture on the street corners of Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.
Nas, the Notorious B.I.G., and Jadakiss all referenced the game in their music. Kool G Rap called his 1995 album 4,5,6, and its title track included the line “Headcrack, time to get the bread”—the lyric that most likely inspired 50 Cent’s casino adaptation.
But it was Thomas DeCarlo Callaway who gave the game its biggest mainstream exposure, and gesture of love, when he took his stage name, CeeLo Green, directly from it.
According to TCS/JOHNHUXLEY, 50 Cent Headcrack is designed to attract players who are not already at the tables, and to keep the game moving once they sit down, while preserving Cee-lo’s essential drama: three dice, one shooter, and the hope of rolling a 4-5-6.
What is Banana Rock?
He told iGB earlier this year he’d “certainly be interested” in a full four-year term after the current one expires. With a background in suppliers and testing labs, Dreitzer is acutely aware of the technical challenges facing the state.
“When I started here, I had multiple conversations with various licensees who operate across multiple jurisdictions, and the consistent commentary I heard was that they would go to Nevada last, if not never at all, because there was concern about the time it would take, the lack of regulatory consistency, the lack of clarity,” he told iGB in January. “So when I came in, in view of the mandate from the governor and the work began by Chair Hendrick, I felt I needed to do something.”
Jess has covered the global gaming industry since 2022. A native of Reno, Nevada, he’d like to note that it’s Ne-va-da, not Ne-VAH-da.
