When most people think of a casino, they picture the Las Vegas megaresorts whose bright neon lights symbolize fun and excitement. But a casino is actually much more than that; according to Merriam-Webster, a casino is “a building or room used for social amusements, especially gambling.”
Gambling was illegal in most American states until the late 1970s, when Atlantic City became the first city in the United States to permit casinos. Since then, many other states have changed their laws to allow casinos. Some are run by Native American tribes, and others are operated by commercial companies.
The economic mainstays of most casinos are the slots and other electronic games, which are played for a small sum and require little human intervention. In one survey, fifty percent of those who acknowledged participating in casino gambling selected slot machines as their favorite game; card games, such as poker and blackjack, came in second with 30 percent; and table games (including craps and roulette) were third with only a fraction of the overall share. Keno and bingo are far less popular, but the number of patrons who play these games varies greatly by location and time of day.
Modern casinos employ two separate departments to protect their patrons from criminal activity: a physical security force and a specialized surveillance department that operates closed-circuit television. The latter has become a powerful tool for combating crime, as it allows managers to monitor the activities of individual gamblers and groups of gamblers. It is also used to monitor employee theft and to catch cheaters.