A casino is a place where people can play a variety of games of chance for money. While luxuries like restaurants, stage shows, shopping centers and themed hotels may help draw in customers, casinos would not exist without games of chance. Slot machines, blackjack, poker and other gambling games provide the billions in profits raked in by casinos every year.
While Casino boasts a few bravura set pieces and Scorsese’s typically ferocious filmmaking, the movie is more rueful than exuberant. Its gloomy tone is well-suited to the dark side of the casino business and to Ace’s character’s own cynical, small-town worldview.
From a security standpoint, casinos are heavily guarded. Observant floor employees watch patrons and can quickly spot a crooked game or cheating. Elaborate surveillance systems offer a high-tech eye-in-the-sky, watching every table, window and doorway from a room filled with banks of security monitors. Cameras can be adjusted to focus on particular suspicious patrons.
Despite their reputation for luxury, casinos are a business and their success depends on four things: the popularity of the games they offer, the odds of winning, players’ skills and pure luck. If any one of these elements is missing, the casino can lose money. That is why the casinos offer their biggest bettors extravagant inducements, including free spectacular entertainment, transportation and elegant living quarters.