A casino is a place where gambling games are played. Generally, these places add lots of other stuff—free drinks, restaurants and stage shows—to help draw in players. But even less-lush places that house a variety of gambling activities can be called casinos.
Something about gambling (probably the presence of large amounts of money) seems to encourage people to cheat, steal and scam their way into a jackpot. For this reason, most casinos spend a lot of time and money on security. Casino security begins with employees watching the floor and patrons closely. Dealers are trained to spot blatantly obvious cheating like palming or marking cards. Table managers and pit bosses have a wider view of the tables and can watch for betting patterns that might signal collusion or fraud.
But there’s also a more subtle level of security. Casinos have regular routines and patterns in their operations that make it easy for security personnel to notice when things are off. For example, the normal procedure for a dealer to deal a hand is to shuffle and then deal the cards in a specific way. So if a dealer fumbles or misses a card, it’s much easier for security to spot that unusual behavior. Then there are the cameras, which can be placed strategically throughout a casino to catch anyone who’s out of the ordinary. The best casino resorts are the ones that can combine a full entertainment package with a booming business in slots, blackjack, roulette, poker, craps, keno and other gambling games.
