A casino is a gambling establishment where patrons wager on games of chance. The term is derived from the Latin cazino, meaning “to toss or turn.” Gambling in some form can be found throughout history, from Ancient Mesopotamia and Greece, to Napoleon’s France and Elizabethan England. Today, casinos offer a wide variety of games and services.

Because of the large amounts of money handled within a casino, both patrons and staff may be tempted to cheat or steal in some way. In order to reduce these temptations, most casinos have elaborate security measures. The most common method is the use of cameras to monitor all areas of the casino. In addition, most casinos have a special room filled with banks of security monitors that can be adjusted to focus on particular suspicious patrons.

Many casinos also have a poker room, which offers a different type of game than other casino games. In this case, patrons play against each other, and the casino makes its profit by taking a small percentage of every pot or charging players an hourly fee. Casinos also have special high-tech surveillance systems designed to spot anomalies, such as when a dealer shuffles or deals cards incorrectly.

In the past, organized crime figures were willing to invest money in a casino because it gave them an opportunity to launder criminal proceeds. However, after federal crackdowns and the threat of losing their gambling licenses, legitimate businessmen started to take over casinos. In some cases, they bought out mobsters and took sole or partial ownership of casinos.