A casino is an establishment where people can gamble on games of chance. While glitzy shows, musical fountains and shopping centers help draw visitors, most of the money a casino makes comes from gambling. Slot machines, blackjack, roulette, poker and other table games provide the billions in profits casinos rake in every year.
Something about large sums of cash in close proximity encourages cheating and theft, either in collusion or independently. To combat this, casinos devote a great deal of effort and expense to security measures. Cameras throughout the facility keep an eye on patrons and their movements; security personnel monitor these cameras from a separate room filled with banks of monitors.
In addition to these general security measures, casinos employ a number of technological innovations designed to make their operations more efficient and accurate. For example, a special form of chip with built-in microcircuitry allows casinos to track each bet minute by minute; and electronic monitoring of roulette wheels helps discover any statistical deviations from the expected results. Casinos also hire mathematicians and computer programmers who specialize in this area, called gaming analysis.
In the past, casinos largely confined themselves to Nevada and Atlantic City, where gambling was legalized. But as real estate investors and hotel chains realized they could make a lot of money off casino gambling, they began buying out mob casinos and opening their own. The number of casinos exploded. Today, there are casinos in almost every state and several countries around the world.