A casino is a place where people can gamble on games of chance. Modern casinos also have restaurants, hotels and non-gambling game rooms. They usually have security and a staff to supervise gambling activities. The security personnel have a variety of ways to monitor patrons and prevent cheating. These include using cameras with a wide view to watch for suspicious behavior, or more focused monitoring by employees at each table who can detect palming and other cheating. Other technologies are used as well, such as “chip tracking,” where betting chips with microcircuitry enable a computer to oversee exactly what is being wagered minute by minute; and electronic monitoring of roulette wheels to discover any statistical deviations from expected results.
Despite their seamy associations with organized crime and other illegal rackets, casinos have become a major source of income for many states, particularly in the United States. In the 1980s casinos began appearing on American Indian reservations, which are exempt from state antigambling laws. Many of the largest and most luxurious casinos in the world combine gambling with high-end amenities, such as hotel rooms, spas and restaurants.
Because most games of chance have built-in mathematical advantages for the house, casinos can make a profit on almost every bet that is placed. This profit, called the house edge, can be small, but over millions of bets it adds up to a significant amount of money. For this reason, casinos routinely offer big bettors extravagant inducements such as free spectacular entertainment and transportation, elegant living quarters, reduced-fare hotel rooms, and free drinks and cigarettes while gambling.
