A casino is a building or room where gambling games are played. The name comes from the Latin word for “house” and is a reference to the game of chance. Today’s casinos offer a wide variety of games, including poker, blackjack, roulette, and slot machines. Many also offer live entertainment, top-notch hotels, and spas. They are famous around the world and are a major source of revenue for cities and states.

Although most people associate casinos with Las Vegas and Atlantic City, there are a number of them in the United States and elsewhere. They contribute a significant amount of tax revenue to their home communities, helping to support local government services and infrastructure projects. They also increase employment opportunities and bring up average wages in the immediate neighborhood of the casino.

Because the odds of winning a particular game depend on skill, casinos employ a variety of measures to prevent cheating and theft by their patrons. These include a combination of physical and specialized security personnel, along with surveillance systems that monitor activity in the gaming areas. In addition, many of the games have built-in microcircuitry that allows casinos to oversee betting amounts minute by minute and quickly discover any statistical deviations from expected results.

In addition to traditional table games, some casinos feature exotic Far Eastern games, such as sic bo (which spread to several European and American casinos in the 1990s), fan-tan, and pai-gow. Most casinos, however, are dominated by slots and video poker machines, which generate income from high-volume play at sums ranging from a penny to a dollar.