Beneath all the twinkly lights, flashing games and free cocktails, casinos are designed to bleed their patrons of cash. The best way to avoid this fate is to know your own limits before you step inside a casino:
Casinos are places where gambling activities take place, and they usually provide a variety of games of chance. The majority of the money a casino makes each year (excluding food and beverage sales) comes from those gambling activities. The casinos add luxuries like restaurants, free drinks and stage shows to attract customers, but they would not exist without games of chance such as slot machines, blackjack, roulette, craps and keno.
Due to the large amounts of money that are handled within a casino, both patrons and employees may be tempted to cheat or steal, either in collusion or independently. This is why casinos have many security measures in place to prevent this. Cameras are located throughout the casino, and these can be adjusted to focus on suspicious patrons. In addition to cameras, other technological systems monitor table play and even the results of roulette wheels to quickly discover any statistical deviation from expected outcomes.
Some casinos also hire mathematicians and computer programmers to analyze the odds of certain games, in order to make their betting policies more transparent to their patrons. These people are referred to as gaming mathematicians or gaming analysts. The work they do is a vital part of the business, and it helps make sure that the house does not have an unfair advantage over its patrons.