Casino is an adult amusement park that makes most of its profits from gambling. While musical shows, lighted fountains and shopping centers help draw in the crowds, casinos would not exist without games of chance such as slot machines, roulette, blackjack, poker, craps and baccarat. These games of chance provide the billions in profit that casinos rake in each year.

The modern casino has a number of built in advantages that ensure the house will win most of the time. These advantage amounts are small, often less than two percent of the total bets made by patrons. However, over the course of millions of bets, these gains add up and can be used to finance the casinos elaborate hotels, towers, pyramids, and replicas of famous landmarks.

Casinos have been around for centuries and were often run by organized crime groups. They grew rapidly in the United States after legalization of gambling in Nevada in 1931. Later, Atlantic City, New Jersey, and several American Indian reservations opened casinos. Currently there are over 3,000 casinos worldwide.

Security in casinos starts on the gaming floor, where casino employees watch over the games and the players to make sure everything is as it should be. Dealers are trained to spot blatant cheating, such as palming or marking cards, and the tables are watched by pit bosses and managers who look for betting patterns that could indicate collusion. Video cameras and computers monitor table games in a process called chip tracking to quickly discover any statistical anomalies.