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How to play El Habanero
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What is El Habanero?
“For a hundred years this game lived on the corner,” he said in TCS/JOHNHUXLEY’s press release. “Now it’s got a dealer, a pay table and a seat at the table in a real casino. Same dice, new floor.”
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.
How to play El Habanero
Just last week, Sunderland announced the crypto casino and sports betting platform Shuffle as its new official sleeve partner, in what was described as a “multi-year partnership”.
Shuffle does not hold a licence to operate in the UK.
Meanwhile, Stake continues to feature on the sleeve of Everton’s kits, despite ceasing operations in the UK in early 2025 amid a Gambling Commission investigation into its advertising.
