The casino is a modern invention, but gambling in one form or another has been around for thousands of years. From Mesopotamia and Ancient Greece, through Roman and French colonial Africa and Europe, to the present day United States, casinos have provided entertainment based on chance to people of all economic backgrounds.
Casinos make their money by charging a small fee to players for the use of their games, called the house edge. This advantage can be as low as two percent, but it adds up over millions of bets by casino patrons. This profit is used to pay for the spectacular hotels, fountains and replicas of famous landmarks that casino buildings often feature.
Some casinos focus on glamour and history, such as the Bellagio in Las Vegas and the Casino de Monte-Carlo in Monaco, while others offer a wide range of gaming choices and amenities, including restaurants, bars, non-gambling game rooms, pools and spas. The best casinos also provide an impressive array of security measures, from cameras and surveillance systems to highly trained personnel that watch the behavior and reactions of casino patrons, looking for any statistical deviation from the expected results.
In the past, some of the biggest names in organized crime were involved in running casinos. They supplied the funds, and often took sole or partial ownership of these businesses, which had a seamy reputation given their illegal nature. Casinos have since gone through a series of technological revolutions that have made them more accurate and safer, from electronic systems to monitor the exact amounts wagered minute by minute to roulette wheels that are electronically monitored regularly to discover any statistical deviation from their expected results.