After the success of Goodfellas ushered in an era of mobsters in cinematic fashion, Martin Scorsese followed up with Casino, a loose adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi’s book that traces organized crime in Vegas. The movie stars Goodfellas co-stars Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in a riveting drama about the end of mob control of Las Vegas.
Casino is a thrilling look at how casinos have become huge gambling corporations, with tentacles reaching out to politicians, the Teamsters union, and even the Chicago mafia. The film is also a fascinating sociological study of how gambling has changed our culture and how addiction to it can be dangerous.
Like any business, a casino must be profitable to survive. To ensure this, casinos have built-in advantages that help them beat players over time. These advantages are based on math, and while they vary by game, they help ensure that over the long haul the house will make more money than it loses to gamblers. These mathematical calculations are performed by gaming mathematicians and computer programmers, known as casino game analysts.