Casinos are a big money making businesses. They make money with every bet customer places. House edge is the profit of casino which is the percentage of original bet of the player.  This profit is known as the casino advantage or the house edge. In simple terms it is the difference between the true odds and odds that casino pays if a player wins. Ideally, the customer should be paid the full amount in case of a win but casinos keep some amount as their profit. For different games, the house edge is different. Roulette and craps have a fixed percentage as any number of spins and rolls can not change the odds. For a double zero roulette wheel the house edge is 5.26%. A single zero roulette wheel has the house edge of 2.7 %. Blackjack and video poker games are very much skill based. Depending on the card played and the skill of the player, the house advantage keeps swinging from player to the house. In blackjack you can lower the house advantage and thus reduce your loss. Australian Pontoon usually has house advantage in the range of 0.3-0.5 %.  A game like Keno can have up to 25 %, of house advantage. The slot machines can have 15%. Before going to start playing, it is very important to know the rules of the casino as each casino has some variations and that can alter a player’s chance. For novices, games having a house edge above 3% should be avoided.

There are a number of games one can play in casinos. Customers can gamble by playing slot machines, poker, blackjack, Roulette, craps and many more. In casinos, the house (casino) has advantage all the time over the players which is called House Edge.  In few games like poker where there is no house edge, casinos take commissions from pot which is called Rake. Casinos also give comps to players who put more money. Usually they have formula from which they derive who is liable for the comps based on the average bet the player has placed, number of hours that he has played and the percentage that casino will win. The Comps offered are usually free drinks, free airfare, free food or limo service. At the casino, Payout is the amount which is won by the players. Then there is a term called ‘Playing with house money’ which does not mean the player is not using his money but that the player is placing bets from the money he has won from the casino. A skilled player can reduce the house advantage in his favor but it is almost impossible for players however skilled they are, to eliminate this advantage that casinos have. As it is a big industry, people keep finding ways to cheat the system. To control the frauds and cheatings, several cameras are installed in casinos. Trained people keep a watch not only on customers but also on employees of the casino.

For easy handling and counting purposes tokens are used instead of currencies. Casino tokens are also called chips or checks. These tokens are small discs which are used instead of currency. Metal coins are used in slot machines, but in table games, molded compressed clay tokens are used. They are uniform in size and look neat when they are stacked. For higher stakes, gaming plaques are used. These are rectangular in shape and bigger than the tokens. These plaques have serial numbers. The casino tokens have no value outside casinos. One can get tokens in exchange for money at tables or the cashier station. Of late, many casinos have started using paper receipts and cards instead of coins. That’s because, metal coins causes lot of jamming problems. In the early days of poker, chips were not used. Instead, people used gold pieces, nuggets, wood, ivory, bone chips. The clay chips were introduced in 1930. But these tokens are not 100 % clay instead; they are made from composite materials. The process of token making is a secret and often an expensive one. The spot on the edge are not painted but actually a different colored clay block is sued before cutting individual chips. A central inlay is given to each chip and then chips are heated and compressed. Inlays are of paper which has a plastic coating given before the compression step. After this process, inlays become a part of the chip.  Generally white, red, blue, yellow colored discs are used but now it comes in many unusual colors too. Every casino has their unique chip design and they do not accept each other casino tokens, except in Las Vegas where few casinos accept tokens of a different casino.

One can broadly classify casino games into three categories. These are; table games, electronic machine games and random number ticket games. Gaming machines do not require the employees of the casino to play with the players like the table games. Few gaming machines are slot machines, pachinko, video poker, and video lottery terminal. Of all the games, slot machines perhaps offer the best edge to a player. The number games like roulette are played on a table. Other number games like Bingo and Keno can be played by purchasing paper ticket or cards. Table games can be card games like baccarat, blackjack, poker, red dog, Spanish 21, Pai gow poker, Chinese poker, Faro etc.  Then there are dice games like craps, sic Bo, pai gow which are also played on the table. The casino tables too vary in shape depending on the game. Poker has oval shaped table, while blackjack is played on crescent shaped table. The rectangular table is for craps. Of all the table game, blackjack is the most popular as it is easy to understand and gives the best odds. Poker is another popular game and depends very much on the skill of the player. Baccarat draws more refined crowd than poker or blackjack. Roulette is for the starters as it does not require any skill or strategies and anyone can play it. The noisiest table game of the lot is craps. It is a dice game which offers one of the best odds as the house advantage is very low.

Casinos are places where certain gambling activities take place. Some casinos also have live entertainment shows. Casinos are normally found in hotels, cruise ships, and other such places of tourist attractions in countries where gambling is legal. Originally casino meant a ‘small villa’ in Italian. Surprisingly, casino does not necessarily means a gambling house.  Around 1638, the first of the casinos was built in Venice. First legal casino was opened in Baden, Switzerland in the year 1765. Gambling has a very old history and records have shown that gambling existed in all the major civilizations like roman, Chinese, Indian. One can find many references and tales about games of chance which was nothing but gambling.  In US, casinos were earlier called as saloons.  In cities like New York and Chicago, gambling halls emerged. These places were mostly frequented by the upper class and gambling was associated with the elites. In fact New York was one of the major gambling centers in the US in 1850’s. Slowly gambling was associated with scams, cheaters, frauds and all these centre were shut down.  In 20th century gambling was banned in US but by 1930’s it was legalized and hence Las Vegas had the first casino in US. Now casino industry has become one of the biggest industries in the world. Some countries thrive on the revenues from the gambling industry. In 1990’s, online casinos were launched. Internet gaming business is very popular these days and one can find thousands of gaming sites.