A casino is a place where certain types of gambling take place. The modern casino is like an indoor amusement park for adults with the bulk of the entertainment coming from gambling: slot machines, black jack, roulette, craps and keno generate billions in profit each year.
Gambling has been around as long as humans have had the urge to test their luck. The precise origins of gambling are unknown, but some form of it has been in almost every culture since ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, Napoleon’s France and Elizabethan England.
The modern casino is designed to be an awe-inspiring experience with spectacular decorations and lighting. In addition to the typical gambling games, casinos often feature restaurants and stage shows. Some are renowned for their elegance and sophistication; others are more rough and ready. The Bellagio in Las Vegas, for example, is widely regarded as one of the finest casinos in the world, and even featured in the movie Ocean’s 11.
With large amounts of money changing hands, patrons of casinos are sometimes tempted to cheat or steal. Whether in collusion with other patrons or independently, this is why many casinos spend a lot of time and money on security measures. Security cameras placed throughout the casino are a basic security measure, but some casinos also have high-tech “eyes in the sky” that can be directed to watch specific suspicious patrons from a separate room filled with banks of security monitors.