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In modern English a casino is a facility that houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are known for hosting live entertainment events, such as stand-up comedy, concerts, and sporting events. Use in the past, and modern use in other countries, does not necessarily involve gambling.

Contents 1 Etymology and usage 2 History of gambling houses 3 Gambling in casinos 4 Places well-known for casinos 4.1 Monte Carlo, Monaco 4.2 Macau, China 4.3 Casinos in the United States 5 Security 6 Crime 7 See also 8 Gallery 9 Notes 10 External links

[edit] Etymology and usage

The term "Casino" is of Italian origin, the root word being "Casa" (house) and originally meant a small country villa, summerhouse or pavilion. The word changed to refer to a building built for pleasure, usually on the grounds of a larger Italian villa or palazzo. Such buildings were used to host civic town functions – including dancing, music listening and gambling.

There are examples of such casinos at Villa Giulia and Villa Farnese. In modern day Italian, this term designates a bordello (also called "casa chiusa", literally "closed house"), while the gambling house is spelled casinò with an accent.^[1]

During the 19th century, the term "casino" came to include other public buildings where pleasurable activities, including gambling, and sports took place. An example of this type of building is the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island.

Not all casinos were used for gaming. The Copenhagen Casino was a theatre, known for the use made of its hall for mass public meetings during the 1848 Revolution which made Denmark a constitutional monarchy. Until 1937 it was a well-known Danish theatre.^[2] The Hanko Casino located in Hanko, Finland - one of that town's most conspicuous landmarks - was never used for gambling. Rather, it was a banquet hall for the Russian nobility which frequented this spa resort in the late 19th century, and is presently used as a restaurant. The Catalina Casino,^[3] a famous landmark overlooking Avalon Harbor 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.

In military usage in Spanish and German, a casino or kasino is an officers' mess; a confusing linguistic false friend for translators.

[edit] History of gambling houses

The precise origin of gambling is unknown. The Chinese recorded the first official account of the practice in 2300 BC, but it is generally believed that gambling in some form or another has been seen in almost every society in history. From the Ancient Greeks and Romans to Napoleon's France and Elizabethan England, much of history is filled with stories of entertainment based on games of chance.^[4]

The first known European gambling house, not called a casino although meeting the modern definition, was the Ridotto, established in Venice, Italy in1638 to provide controlled gambling during the carnival season. It was closed in the 1770 as the city government perceived it to impoverish the local gentry.

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 America, gambling became outlawed and banned by state legislation and social reformers of the time. However, in 1931, gambling was legalized throughout the state of Nevada, along with Las Vegas and Reno. America's first legalized casinos were set up in those places. In 1978 New Jersey allowed gambling in Atlantic City, now America's second largest gambling city.

[edit] Gambling in casinos

In most jurisdictions worldwide, gambling is limited to persons over the age of license (16 to 21 years of age in most countries where casinos are permitted).^[5]

Customers gamble by playing games of chance, in some cases with an element of skill, such as craps, roulette, baccarat, blackjack, poker, and slot machines. Most games played 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 to gamblers.

Payout is the percentage won by players.

Casinos in the USA say that a player staking money won from the casino is playing with house money.

[edit] Places well-known for casinos

While there are casinos in many places, a few places have become well-known specifically for gambling. Perhaps the place almost defined by its casino is Monte Carlo, but other places are known as gambling centers.

[edit] Monte Carlo, Monaco

Monte Carlo has a famous casino popular with well-off visitors, which is a tourist attraction in its own right. A song and a film named The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo need no explanation—they clearly refer to the casino.

The casino has made Monte Carlo so well-known for games of chance that mathematical methods for solving various problems using many quasi-random numbers—numbers with the statistical distribution of numbers generated by chance—are formally known as Monte Carlo methods. Monte Carlo, was part of the plot in a few James Bond novels and films.

[edit] Macau, China

The former Portuguese colony of Macau, part of China since 1999, is a popular destination for visitors who wish to gamble. This started in Portuguese times, when Macau was popular with visitors from nearby British Hong Kong where gambling was more closely regulated.

[edit] Casinos in the United States

In much of the Unites States casinos are forbidden or tightly regulated. A few places allow casinos, and they have become well-known as centers of legal gambling. 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.

Las Vegas 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 (2009 Annual Revenues^[6]):

• 1. Las Vegas Strip $5.550 billion
• 2. Atlantic City $3.943 billion
• 3. Chicago region $2.092 billion
• 4. Connecticut $1.448 billion
• 5. Detroit $1.36 billion
• 6. St. Louis $1.050 billion
• 7. Tunica Resorts, Mississippi $997.02 million
• 8. Biloxi, Miss. $833.50 million
• 9. Shreveport, La. $779.65 million
• 10. Boulder Strip (Las Vegas) $774.33 million
• 12. Reno, Nevada $715.23 million
• 15. New Orleans, La. $653.05 million
• 18. Downtown Las Vegas $523.82 million
• 19. Laughlin, Nevada $492.51 million

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

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

[edit] Security

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, which patrols the casino floor and responds to calls for assistance and reports of suspicious or definitely criminal activity, and a specialized surveillance department that operates the casino's closed circuit television system (known in the industry as the eye in the sky). These departments work closely together^{[citation needed]}. 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.^[7]

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 usually required to keep their hands visible at all times.

[edit] Crime

One area of controversy surrounding casinos is their relationship to crime rates. Many casino opponents contend that casinos contribute to crime, and some recent research supports this.^{[citation needed]} However, economics studies that do show a positive relationship between casinos and crime usually fail to consider the visiting population at risk when they calculate the crime rate in casino areas. Such studies thus count the crimes committed by visitors, but do not count visitors in the population measure, and this overstates the crime rates in casino areas. Part of the reason this methodology is used, despite it leading to an overstatement of crime rates is that reliable data on tourist count are often not available.^[8]

[edit] See also

[edit] Gallery

Portugal's Casino Estoril, near Lisbon, is the largest in Europe

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Casino

• Worldwide Casino Listings at the Open Directory Project