A casino is a place where people can gamble on games of chance. While it has become popular to add a variety of other amenities to casinos (musical shows, food courts, shopping centers), they are still primarily places where people can make bets and win money. Most modern casinos offer a large variety of games including slots, blackjack, roulette, craps, baccarat and poker.

Most casinos earn the bulk of their profits from slot machines. The reason for this is that most slot machine games have no skill element, and are purely random. A player simply puts in money, pulls a handle or pushes a button, and then watches varying bands of colored shapes roll on reels (actual physical ones or video representations of them). If the right pattern appears, the machine pays out a predetermined amount of money.

Some casinos offer traditional Far Eastern games such as sic bo, fan-tan and pai-gow. A few even have rooms where players can play two-up, banca francesa, boule or kalooki.

Due to the enormous sums of money that are handled within a casino, many security measures have been put in place. The use of cameras is a big part of this, as are the presence of armed guards on the premises. In addition, a variety of other technologies are also used to keep the gambling activities as fair as possible. For example, electronic chips with built-in microcircuitry can monitor betting levels minute by minute, and a computerized system watches roulette wheels to detect any statistical deviation from their expected results.