A Casino is a place where people can gamble. While casinos may add many other luxuries like restaurants, shops and stage shows to help draw in the crowds, they are primarily places where people can play games of chance and win money. There are plenty of different casino games to choose from, and each game has a mathematical expectancy that gives the house an edge over the players. Despite these odds, casinos still make billions of dollars in profits every year.
While the concept of a casino is fairly new, gambling in some form or another has been around since ancient times. The earliest evidence of this is primitive protodice, which have been found in some of the oldest archaeological sites. However, the modern casino as we know it didn’t really develop until the 16th century, when a gambling craze swept Europe and Italian aristocrats began hosting parties in facilities known as ridotti [Source: Schwartz].
Casinos also use sophisticated security systems to protect their patrons and workers from theft and cheating. The most basic element of this is a network of surveillance cameras throughout the casino, which can be adjusted to focus on suspicious patrons by security employees in a separate room filled with banks of security monitors. In addition, most casino tables have a pit boss or manager who oversees the activity and can watch for cheating or collusion. More advanced casinos may have eye-in-the-sky surveillance systems that allow security personnel to see everyone in the entire casino at once.
