Casino

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A casino is a facility that accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are often placed near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships and other vacation attractions. Some casinos are known for hosting live entertainment events, such as concerts and sporting events.

History

The term originally meant a small villa, summerhouse or pavilion built for pleasure, usually on the grounds of a larger Italian villa or palazzo. There are examples of such casinos at Villa Giulia and Villa Farnese. During the 19th century, the term casino came to include other more public buildings where pleasurable activities, including gambling and sports, took place. An example of this type of building is the Newport Casino. In modern Italian, this term designates a bordello (also called "casa chiusa", literally "closed house"), while the gambling house is spelled casinò with an accent.

Gambling in casinos

In most jurisdictions, gambling is limited to persons over the age of majority (21 years of age in most of the United States^{[citation needed]} and 18 to 21 in most other countries where casinos are permitted)^{[citation needed]}.

Customers gamble by playing slot machines or other games of chance (e.g., craps, roulette, baccarat) and some skill (e.g., blackjack, poker) (for more see casino games). Games usually have mathematically-determined odds that ensure the house retains a long term advantage over the players. This advantage is called the house edge. In games such as poker where players play against each other, the house takes a commission called the rake.

Payout is the percentage won by players.

Playing with house money refers to the situation where a winning player is placing bets with money that has been won from the casino.

Negative Effects

Professor Earl Grinols of Baylor University suggests that casinos increase the number of pathological gamblers in a community. Through cost/benefit analysis, Grinols concludes that in order to have positive net economic effect, casinos would need to employ roughly 13% of a community of 100,000 people.^[1]

Security

Casinos focus greatly on security. Large amounts of currency move through a casino, tempting people to cheat the system. Security today consists of cameras located throughout the property operated by highly trained individuals who attempt to locate cheating and stealing by both players and employees.

Modern casino security is usually divided between a physical security force, which patrols the casino floor and responds to calls for assistance and reports of criminal and/or suspicious activities, and a specialized surveillance department, that operates the casino's closed circuit television (CCTV) system in an effort to detect any misconduct by both guests and employees alike. Both of these specialized casino security departments work very closely with each other to ensure the safety of both guests and the casino's assets.

When it opened in 1989, The Mirage was the first casino to use security cameras full time on all table games.^[2]

See also

• Monte Carlo Casino
• Casino Night
• List of casinos
• Online casino
• American Gaming Association
• Global Gaming Expo
• Gaming Control Boards
• Gaming law
• Native American gaming

Wikipedia information about Casino This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Casino". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.