A casino is a gambling establishment that offers a variety of games of chance and skill. The most common games are table games such as blackjack, roulette, craps, and baccarat, as well as poker. Casinos also have slot machines, which are similar to arcade games, and can be played with cash or paper tickets printed with barcodes that are scanned by machine to record player wins. Some casinos have a large number of these slot machines and are known as megacasinos.
Security at casinos is a big deal, and casinos have several different levels of protection. On the floor, dealers and croupiers keep an eye on players to make sure they aren’t cheating (palming, marking, or switching dice). Pit bosses and table managers have a broader view of the tables and look for patterns in betting that might signal a problem. And of course, the cameras (known as the eye in the sky) watch everything and report to a central surveillance department.
The earliest casinos were run by the mob, but as real estate investors and hotel chains began to have more money than the gangsters, they bought them out and started running legitimate casinos. Today, many casinos employ a large staff of gaming mathematicians and computer programmers to analyze the house edge and variance of each game they offer. This analysis is important to the casino, as it helps them determine what sort of profits they can expect from each game and how much they need to invest in machines and employees.
