Talk:Heads or Tails

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Removed:

It is the favourite game of the boys of London and the vicinity, now, however, considerably, if not entirely, discontinued through the vigilance of the police and the severity of the magistrates. Not long ago, however, I witnessed a sad and striking scene of it at Twickenham. It was on a Sunday morning. Several boys surrounded two players, one of the latter being about 14 years of age, well dressed, and the other of about 10 years, all in tatters and shoeless. The younger urchin had a long run of good luck, whereat his antagonist exhibited much annoyance, swearing intemperately. At length, however, his luck changed in turn, and he went on winning until the former refused to play any longer, saying -- 'There, you've got back all I won from you.' The bigger boy became enraged at this refusal to continue the play, and seemed inclined to resort to fisticuff, but I interposed and put a stop to the affray. I then questioned the elder boy, and gathered from him that he played as often as he could, sometimes winning or losing from eight to ten shillings. 'And do you generally win? was my next question.' 'No, sir,' he replied, 'I oftener lose.' I shuddered to conjecture what would be the future of this boy. The word of warning I gave him was received with a shrug of the shoulder, and he walked off with the greatest unconcern.

This sort of material is inappropriate for a modern encyclopedia. I recommend that we go through and update these articles before adding more - the source is obviously old, and can't be dumped in verbatim. Critical review and editing are needed. -- April 16:35 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)

Does anyone know why the non-heads side of a coin is called "tails"? Growing up in Australia, I had always assumed it was because the other side of the coin had an image of an animal on it - but now that I see this article and think about it, it's obvious that this is not true for many other nations' coins. So where does "tails" come from? - dmmaus 09:25, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have added a note to this article about the origins - the British 10p coin, which is always used for this game in the UK, has a lion on the back with a big tail. However, this is only since decimalisation, so it's not certain... --taras 22:07, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The reference to tails coming from the lion on the English ten pence has been removed as this does not reflect the true origin of the expression. Heads or Tails predates decimalisation of the Pound in the UK. Ozdaren 14:55, 19 June 2006 (UTC)