A casino is a gambling establishment that offers a variety of games of chance for money. It also offers sports betting, which is especially popular in the US. Its sports betting facilities include 60 large plasma TV’s where you can place bets on American football, boxing and MMA.
Despite the elaborate hotels, lighted fountains and shopping centers that give casinos their distinctive look, they would not exist without the billions in profits that patrons place on games of chance such as slot machines, blackjack, roulette, poker, craps and keno. Every game has a built in statistical advantage for the house and it is very rare for any one game to lose money on a given day. This virtual guarantee of profit has allowed casinos to spend lavishly on extravagant inducements for big bettors in the form of free spectacular entertainment, limousine transportation and elegant living quarters.
In the early days of the Las Vegas strip, the casino business was dominated by the Mafia. Mobster cash flowed into the casinos, but federal crackdowns on organized crime and the risk of losing a gaming license at the slightest hint of mafia involvement forced casinos to seek out wealthy businessmen willing to shoulder the financial burden of running their gambling enterprises. These savvy businessmen bought out the mobsters and established legitimate casinos. Today, most casinos have an intricate security system that includes a physical security force as well as a separate specialized surveillance department. The latter has cameras throughout the casino that can be aimed at specific tables and even individual patrons in a separate room full of banks of security monitors, known as the eye-in-the-sky.
