Casino

Casino is of Italian origin; the root casa means a house. The term casino may mean a small country villa, summerhouse, or social club.[1] During the 19th century, casino came to include other public buildings where pleasurable activities took place; such edifices were usually built on the grounds of a larger Italian villa or palazzo, and were used to host civic town functions, including dancing, gambling, music listening, and sports. Examples in Italy include Villa Farnese and Villa Giulia, and in the US the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island. In modern-day Italian, a casino is a brothel (also called casa chiusa, literally "closed house"), a mess (confusing situation), or a noisy environment; a gaming house is spelt casinò, with an accent.[2][1][3]

Not all casinos are used for gaming. The Catalina Casino, on Santa Catalina Island, California, has never been used for traditional games of chance, which were already outlawed in California by the time it was built.[4] The Copenhagen Casino was a Danish theatre which also held public meetings during the 1848 Revolution, which made Denmark a constitutional monarchy.[5]

In military and non-military usage, a casino (Spanish) or Kasino (German) is an officers' mess.

Gambling at the Orient Saloon in Bisbee, Arizona, c.1900. Photograph by C.S. Fly.

The precise origin of gambling is unknown. It is generally believed that gambling in some form or another has been seen in almost every society in history. From Ancient Mesopotamia, Greeks and Romans to Napoleon's France and Elizabethan England, much of history is filled with stories of entertainment based on games of chance.

The first known European gambling house, not called a casino although meeting the modern definition, was the Ridotto, established in Venice, Italy, in 1638 by the Great Council of Venice to provide controlled gambling during the carnival season. It was closed in 1774 as the city government felt it was impoverishing the local gentry.[6]

In American history, early gambling establishments were known as saloons. The creation and importance of saloons was greatly influenced by four major cities: New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago and San Francisco. It was in the saloons that travelers could find people to talk to, drink with, and often gamble with. During the early 20th century in the US, gambling was outlawed by state legislation. However, in 1931, gambling was legalized throughout the state of Nevada, where the US's first legalized casinos were set up. In 1976 New Jersey allowed gambling in Atlantic City, now the US's second largest gambling city.[7]

Slot machines in Atlantic City. Slot machines are a standard attraction of casinos

Most jurisdictions worldwide have a minimum gambling age of 18 to 21.[8]

Customers gamble by playing games of chance, in some cases with an element of skill, such as craps, roulette, baccarat, blackjack, and video poker. Most games have mathematically determined odds that ensure the house has at all times an advantage over the players. This can be expressed more precisely by the notion of expected value, which is uniformly negative (from the player's perspective). This advantage is called the house edge. In games such as poker where players play against each other, the house takes a commission called the rake. Casinos sometimes give out complimentary items or comps to gamblers.

Payout is the percentage of funds ("winnings") returned to players.

Casinos in the United States say that a player staking money won from the casino is playing with the house's money.

Video Lottery Machines (slot machines) have become one of the most popular forms of gambling in casinos. As of 2011 investigative reports have started calling into question whether the modern-day slot-machine is addictive.[9]

Casino design—regarded as a psychological exercise—is an intricate process that involves optimising floor plan, décor and atmospherics to encourage gambling.[10]

Factors influencing gambling tendencies include sound, odour and lighting. Natasha Dow Schüll, an anthropologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, highlights the decision of the audio directors at Silicon Gaming to make its slot machines resonate in "the universally pleasant tone of C, sampling existing casino soundscapes to create a sound that would please but not clash".[11]

Alan Hirsch, founder of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, studied the impact of certain scents on gamblers, discerning that a pleasant albeit unidentifiable odor released by Las Vegas slot machines generated about 50% more in daily revenue. He suggested that the scent acted as an aphrodisiac, causing a more aggressive form of gambling.[12]

The following lists major casino markets in the world with casino revenue of over US$1 billion as published in PricewaterhouseCoopers's report on the outlook for the global casino market:[13]

By markets

Rank	Location	No. of Casinos	Revenue (US$M)
			2009	2010 Projected	2011 Projected
1	Macau	33	14,955	22,445	28,379
2	Las Vegas, Nevada	122	10,247	9,950	10,300
3	Singapore	2	2,119	2,750	5,479
4	France	189	3,965	3,909	3,957
5	Atlantic City, New Jersey	12	3,943	3,550	3,330
6	Australia	11	2,697	2,769	2,847
7	South Korea	17[14]	2,401	2,430	2,512
8	Germany	76	2,073	2,055	2,081
9	South Africa	36[15]	1,845	1,782	2,012
10	United Kingdom	141	1,212	1,193	1,209
11	Poland	36[16]	1,089	1,091	1,126
12	Niagara Falls, Ontario	2	1,102	1,114	1,203

Macau

The Venetian Macao

The former Portuguese colony of Macau, a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China since 1999, is a popular destination for visitors who wish to gamble.[22] This started in Portuguese times, when Macau was popular with visitors from nearby Hong Kong, where gambling was more closely regulated. The Venetian Macao is currently the largest casino in the world. Macau also surpassed Las Vegas as the largest gambling market in the world.[22]

Portugal

The Casino Estoril, in Portuguese Riviera, is Europe's largest casino by capacity.

The Casino Estoril, located in the municipality of Cascais, on the Portuguese Riviera, near Lisbon, is the largest casino in Europe by capacity.

During the Second World War, it was reputed to be a gathering point for spies, dispossessed royals, and wartime adventurers; it became an inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond 007 novel Casino Royale.

United States

The Las Vegas Strip in Nevada, the heart of the gambling industry in the United States.

With currently over 1,000 casinos, the United States has the largest number of casinos in the world. The number continues to grow steadily as more states seek to legalize casinos. 40 states now have some form of casino gambling. Interstate competition, such as gaining tourism, has been a driving factor to continuous legalization.[23] Relatively small places such as Las Vegas are best known for gambling; larger cities such as Chicago are not defined by their casinos in spite of the large turnover.

The Las Vegas Valley has the largest concentration of casinos in the United States. Based on revenue, Atlantic City, New Jersey ranks second, and the Chicago region third.

Top American casino markets by revenue (2015 annual revenues):[24]

1. Las Vegas Strip $6.348 billion
2. Atlantic City $2.426 billion
3. Chicago region $2.002 billion
4. New York City $1.400 billion
5. Detroit $1.376 billion
6. Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area $1.306 billion
7. Philadelphia $1.192 billion
8. Mississippi Gulf Coast $1.135 billion
9. St. Louis $1.007 billion
10. The Poconos $965.56 million
11. Lake Charles, Louisiana $907.51 million
12. Boulder Strip $784.35 million
13. Kansas City $782.05 million
14. Shreveport $732.51 million

The Nevada Gaming Control Board divides Clark County, which is coextensive with the Las Vegas metropolitan area, into seven market regions for reporting purposes.

Native American gaming has been responsible for a rise in the number of casinos outside of Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

A sign at the Thousand Islands Casino

Given the large amounts of currency handled within a casino, both patrons and staff may be tempted to cheat and steal, in collusion or independently; most casinos have security measures to prevent this. Security cameras located throughout the casino are the most basic measure.

Modern casino security is usually divided between a physical security force and a specialized surveillance department. The physical security force usually patrols the casino and responds to calls for assistance and reports of suspicious or definite criminal activity. A specialized surveillance department operates the casino's closed circuit television system, known in the industry as the eye in the sky. Both of these specialized casino security departments work very closely with each other to ensure the safety of both guests and the casino's assets, and have been quite successful in preventing crime.[25] Some casinos also have catwalks in the ceiling above the casino floor, which allow surveillance personnel to look directly down, through one way glass, on the activities at the tables and slot machines.

When it opened in 1989, The Mirage was the first casino to use cameras full-time on all table games.[26]

In addition to cameras and other technological measures, casinos also enforce security through rules of conduct and behavior; for example, players at card games are required to keep the cards they are holding in their hands visible at all times.

Over the past few decades, casinos have developed many different marketing techniques for attracting and maintaining loyal patrons. Many casinos use a loyalty rewards program used to track players' spending habits and target their patrons more effectively, by sending mailings with free slot play and other promotions.[27] Casino Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland, for example, donates all of its profits to charity.[28][29]

Casinos have been linked to organised crime, with early casinos in Las Vegas originally dominated by the American Mafia[30][31] and in Macau by Triad syndicates.[32][33]

According to some police reports, local incidence of reported crime often doubles or triples within three years of a casino's opening.[34] In a 2004 report by the US Department of Justice, researchers interviewed people who had been arrested in Las Vegas and Des Moines and found that the percentage of problem or pathological gamblers among the arrestees was three to five times higher than in the general population.[35]

It has been said that economic studies showing a positive relationship between casinos and crime usually fail to consider the visiting population: they count crimes committed by visitors but do not count visitors in the population measure, which overstates the crime rate. Part of the reason this methodology is used, despite the overstatement, is that reliable data on tourist count are often not available.[36]

There are unique occupational health issues in the casino industry. The most common are from cancers[37] resulting from exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke[38][39] and musculoskeletal injury (MSI)[40] from repetitive motion injuries while running table games over many hours.[41]

• 
  Italy's Casinò di Campione, near Lugano, is the largest casino in Europe[20]
• 
  The Empire at Leicester Square in London also includes a casino
• 
  Entrance to the casino at Resorts World Sentosa, Singapore
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  The Galaxy Macau at night in Cotai, Macau
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  Wynn Las Vegas in Paradise, Nevada, United States
• 
  The Casino da Madeira in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal
• 
  The Casino Helsinki at night in Helsinki, Finland
• 
  View of the Marina Bay Sands in Marina Bay, Singapore
• 
  The casino in Genting Highlands, Malaysia own by Genting Group
• 
  The Venetian Macau in the Cotai Strip is the largest casino in the world, owned by Las Vegas Sands
• 
  View of the Monte Carlo Casino, Monaco
• 
  MGM Cotai owned by MGM Resorts International, located in Cotai, Macau
• 
  Slot machines at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, New Jersey, United States

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