What is a Casino?

A casino is a building or room equipped for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shops, and entertainment venues. In the United States, the term is most commonly used to refer to a commercial establishment that offers legalized gambling. However, the terms casino and gaming house are also used to describe other types of recreational facilities. The largest casinos in the world are located in Las Vegas, Nevada; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Macao, China.

Something about casinos (maybe the proximity of large amounts of money) seems to encourage patrons and staff members to cheat and steal, whether in collusion or independently. This is why many casinos have extensive security measures. For example, some use a high-tech eye-in-the-sky surveillance system that monitors every table, window and doorway, allowing security workers to zoom in on suspicious patrons. Others have a separate room filled with banks of security monitors that can be tuned to focus on specific suspicious activities.

Even without shady characters, casinos need to have built-in advantages to make money. Most games have a mathematically determined advantage for the casino, known as the house edge, and this is what makes them profitable. Some of these advantages are relatively small, such as the vig or rake taken in poker, but they add up over time to give casinos enough revenue to build hotels, fountains, pyramids and replicas of famous landmarks. Some casinos also give away food and drinks to keep gamblers happy, although this doesn’t reduce the house edge.

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