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Casinos
Some people are convinced that you can't win at a casino. For the most part, these people are correct. But it's not because the casinos cheat, which is a somewhat common myth. It's because casinos always offer games where the odds favor the house. All casino games are set up in a manner where the payout odds on a bet are lower than the actual odds of winning the bet. The difference between the payout odds and the actual odds of winning is called the house edge, and all casino games have a house edge. So in the long run, no one can win at a casino game. But in the short term, anything can happen, even winning at a casino. When someone wins more at a casino game than they could be expected to based on the math indicated by the difference between the actual odds and the payout odds, it's because of a mathematical term called "variance". The math behind casino games only works as you reach ever greater numbers of trials. If you spin a roulette wheel 10 million times, your results will more closely mirror the mathematically expected results than if you spin a roulette wheel 10 times. That's the whole secret behind why casinos are profitable. Gambling has been around forever, but casinos as we know them have only been around for 400 years or so. And really, with the overwhelming number of slot machines that are located in most casinos these days, "casinos as we know them" have really only been around for a few decades. Earlier casinos consisted almost entirely of table games like roulette and blackjack. And some casino games that were common in much older time periods are no longer played in modern casinos, like faro, for example. To play in a casino, you usually have to be old enough to play in a casino. In most jurisdictions worldwide, this age is either 18 or 21. These age limits apply to online casinos as well as to traditional brick and mortar casinos, although opponents of online gambling like to point out that a lot of online casinos do a poor job of monitoring the age of their players. (But most reputable online casinos make a reasonable attempt to make sure that their patrons are legally old enough to play.) In the USA, casinos are only legal in certain states, like Nevada. And even in states where casinos are legal, they're not necessarily legal in every city or county of that state. For example, the state of New Jersey only has legal casinos in Atlantic City. Some states have no casinos at all, like Texas. And some states where casinos are partially legal limit them to Indian casinos, like Oklahoma. Some casinos in the USA are a lot more famous than other casinos in the USA. For example, most of the casinos in Las Vegas have been shown in multiple television shows and movies. Some casinos which no longer exist even played really important roles in movies. I remember watching a plane crash into The Sands in one movie, but the casino had been closed for several months before they filmed that scene. The Sands Casino was later destroyed completely to make way for a new casino. Casinos are also popular online. Video versions of casino games like roulette and blackjack are relatively easy to understand, and they're available at probably at least 2000 different websites. Most of these online casinos are powered by one of a dozen or so software packages which are leased from the online casino software providers - examples of these include Microgaming, Playtech, Cryptologic, and Realtime Gaming. Some online casinos have made themselves pretty famous via a variety of marketing methods. One of these is Golden Palace Casino, which advertised heavily on the radio in certain markets, especially on the Howard Stern show. But they employed a lot of different methods of generating publicity. They had streakers hired to appear at large sporting events with millions of viewers. They also started buying unusual items in eBay auctions, just for the publicity, like William Shatner's kidney stone. This kind of viral marketing helped make Golden Palace Casino a household name. Other online casinos used more traditional publicity and marketing tactics to become well know, like Bodog Casino. Calvin Ayre is no longer with Bodog, but when he was the CEO there, he maintained a very public persona. And Bodog tried to become the Playboy magazine of the gambling industry be getting its fingers into pies as diverse as pop music and entertainment gossip. Their "Bodog Beat" is still a popular online blog which covers gambling topics and celebrity news. No one knows what the future of the casino industry holds, but I can make a guess. Casinos will continue to grow in popularity, and more and more people will have access to casinos as time marches on. |
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