Increasing concern as to the damaging social effects of gambling[4] gave rise to a select committee of the House of Commons whose recommendations were implemented by the Act.

[6] However, following a 2001 report by Sir Alan Budd,[7] in 2002, the UK government accepted that wagers should cease to be unenforceable as contracts, seeking to introduce a new liberalised regulatory regime in order to encourage the gambling industry.

At the time of its repeal this section read: ... every person who shall, by any fraud or unlawful device or ill practice in playing at or with cards, dice, tables, or other game, or in bearing a part in the stakes, wages, or adventures, or in betting on the sides or hands of them that do play, or in wagering on the event of any game, sport, pastime, or exercise, win from any other person to himself, or any other or others, any sum of money or valuable thing, shall—The words of enactment at the start were repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1891.

The following cases are relevant: In 2005, Kwong Lee, Martin Fitz and Shuhal Miah were found guilty of cheating at roulette under this section.

The Act read: All contracts or agreements, whether by parole or in writing, by way of gaming or wagering, shall be null and void; and no suit shall be brought or maintained in any court of law and equity for recovering any sum of money or valuable thing alleged to be won upon any wager, or which shall have been deposited in the hands of any person to abide the event on which any wager shall have been made: Provided always, that this enactment shall not be deemed to apply to any subscription or contribution, or agreement to subscribe or contribute, for or towards any plate, prize, or sum of money to be awarded to the winner or winners of any lawful game, sport, pastime, or exercise.

Provision was made in the Financial Services Act 1986 that a contract would not be void if at least one of the parties entered into it for legitimate business purposes.

Court of law or equity that desired to have any question of fact decided by a jury had it presented in the form of feigned issues, by stating that a wager was laid between two parties interested in respectively maintaining the affirmative and the negative of certain propositions.