A casino, also known as a gaming hall or a gambling establishment, is a facility where people can gamble and place bets on various games of chance or skill. Many casinos feature a wide variety of table games, such as blackjack, craps, and roulette, as well as video poker and slot machines. Some casinos also offer traditional Far Eastern games, such as baccarat and sic bo.

Most casino games have mathematically determined odds that give the house an advantage over players, which is expressed as an expected value that is uniformly negative. This advantage is called the house edge. In games of skill, such as poker, the house earns money via a commission on winning bets, which is called rake.

Casinos can be found in many countries and cities, including some famous ones such as Las Vegas (where the world’s largest casino is named after the legendary Roman emperor, Caesars Palace). The Hotel Lisboa in Macau, built to look like a birdcage, is one of the city’s most distinctive landmarks and a major tourist attraction.

Modern casinos are heavily reliant on technology for security and surveillance purposes. For example, some casinos use “chip tracking,” where the betting chips have microcircuitry that allows them to be monitored minute-by-minute for any anomalies; others have special roulette wheels and dice that are regularly electronically scanned to discover any statistical deviations from their expected values. Casinos also employ a team of mathematicians and computer programmers who specialize in the analysis of casino games, called gaming mathematicians and gaming analysts.