A casino is a place where people can gamble on various games of chance and win money. It also offers other luxuries to attract patrons, such as restaurants and free drinks. A casino may also host stage shows and dramatic scenery. In the past, many places that housed gambling activities were called casinos but had less luxuries.
Table games in a casino are card and dice games played on a table, managed by a croupier. The most famous table games include poker, blackjack and roulette. In addition to these games, a casino may offer electronic slot machines and video poker. The casino has a mathematical advantage over the players, which is known as the house edge. It is usually lower than two percent, but it earns the casino enough money to pay for expensive hotel rooms, fountains and replicas of architectural monuments like the Eiffel Tower.
Casinos spend a great deal of time and effort on security. They monitor all activities of patrons and staff with cameras and other sophisticated equipment. They also have a high-tech eye-in-the-sky system that lets security staff view the entire casino at once from a room filled with banks of monitors.
Casinos are sometimes associated with organized crime figures. Mafia money was the source of the initial expansion and renovation in Las Vegas, but mobster involvement often went far beyond this. They took sole or partial ownership of some casinos, influenced the outcomes of some games and even threatened casino personnel.