What is a Casino?

The word casino is almost always associated with gambling, but the casinos themselves are a lot more than a place to bet on horse races or roll the dice. They are like a modern-day indoor amusement park for adults with games of chance, musical shows, shopping centers and lavish hotels all rolled into one. In fact, they would not exist without the billions of dollars in profits raked in by the millions of players who gamble in them each year.

Casinos are generally divided into three categories: table games, machine games and keno. Table games are manned by croupiers and include blackjack, craps and roulette. In addition to the traditional casino table games, some casinos offer other games popular in their region such as baccarat, sic bo and fan-tan. In addition, Asian casinos tend to offer a variety of traditional Far Eastern games including two-up (which spread to several European and American casinos during the 1990s), pai gow and banca francesa.

A casino’s patrons may be tempted to cheat or steal, either in collusion with each other or independently; this is why most casinos invest a great deal of money in security. Video cameras located throughout the casino and the use of technology to monitor game play such as “chip tracking” on roulette wheels and electronic systems that supervise betting chips with built-in microcircuitry allow casinos to oversee exactly how much is wagered minute by minute, warning them quickly if there is a statistical deviation from expected results.