What Is a Casino?
1 min readA casino is an establishment for gambling, usually combined with a hotel or resort. Its name is a French word for “gambling house.”
The biggest casino in the world is in Macau, China, with a floor space of more than 546,000 square feet and thousands of slots and table games. There are dozens of other casinos that can be found throughout the United States and Europe, including several owned by Native American tribes.
Casinos make money by giving the house a slight edge over the patrons on every bet. That edge can be as low as two percent, and it adds up over the millions of bets placed by customers. This gives casinos enough revenue to build elaborate hotels, fountains and replicas of famous landmarks. They also offer complimentary goods and services, such as rooms, meals, show tickets and limo service to gamblers who spend the most time at their tables.
In the past, gangsters controlled the casinos of Reno and Las Vegas. They used mafia funds to finance expansion and renovation, and they took sole or partial ownership of the properties. However, with federal crackdowns on organized crime and the threat of losing their gaming license at the slightest hint of mob involvement, legitimate businessmen now run casinos. They have deeper pockets than the mobsters, too, and they can afford to pay for better security. Casino security personnel watch over the tables and machines with a discerning eye, looking for blatant cheating or suspicious betting patterns.