A casino is a gambling establishment that offers games of chance and sometimes skill. It also features entertainment such as stage shows and musical performances. Many casinos are located in cities with large populations of people, such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Others are in smaller communities and include games played on cruise ships, in horse racing tracks or on barges that travel along rivers. Casinos are operated by private companies or Native American tribes. They rake in billions of dollars per year for their owners, investors and employees.
While lavish hotels, exotic locales and elaborate themes help draw in customers, the vast majority of a casino’s profits come from gambling. The house always has an advantage in games such as blackjack, craps, roulette and video poker because of the mathematically determined odds involved. The resulting negative expected value (as opposed to the positive expected value of winning a game) is referred to as the “house edge.” Casinos often take a percentage of all wagers, a practice known as raking. They may also offer complimentary items to players, a practice called comping.
Because of the large amounts of money that are handled within a casino, cheating and stealing are common. To prevent this, most casinos have extensive security measures. For example, in some casinos, cameras mounted on the ceiling provide an “eye-in-the-sky” view of every table and window. These cameras can be adjusted to focus on suspicious patrons by security workers in a room filled with banks of monitors.