A casino is an establishment where a wide variety of gambling activities take place. It provides a full entertainment experience, with musical shows, lighted fountains and shopping centers to complement the gaming floor. The modern casino is a much larger facility than those of the past, with many of them now including restaurants, hotels and other amenities. Whether the goal is to make money or simply to have fun, casinos continue to be very popular places for people to gamble.

Casinos make their money by offering games of chance with a built in advantage for the house. This advantage can be as low as two percent, but over time it earns casinos billions of dollars in profits. These profits allow them to build lavish hotels, giant pyramids and towers, and even replicas of famous landmarks. The casinos also earn extra revenue by charging players a small fee to play their games, which is called the vig or rake. This is typically a percentage of each bet placed on table games or video poker. Some casinos give complimentary goods or services to their biggest spenders, such as hotel rooms, meals, tickets to shows and limo service.

The majority of casino profits are made by table games, which include blackjack, roulette, craps and baccarat. The more tables a casino has, the more potential profits it can earn. During the 1990s casinos dramatically increased their use of technology to enhance security and supervise the games themselves. For example, chip tracking allows casinos to monitor betting patterns minute-by-minute and quickly discover any anomalies; roulette wheels are electronically monitored for statistical deviations and adjusted accordingly.