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Casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertainment, such as stand-up comedy, concerts, and sports.
Etymology and usage
The casino is of Italian origin; the root casa means a house. The term casino may mean a small country villa, summerhouse, or social club.[rx] During the 19th century, the term casino came to include other public buildings where pleasurable activities took place; such edifices were usually built on the grounds of a larger Italian villa or palazzo and were used to host civic town functions, including dancing, gambling, music listening, and sports. Examples in Italy include Villa Farnese and Villa Giulia and in the US the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island. In modern-day Italian a casino is a brothel (also called casa chiusa, literally closed house), a mess, or a noisy environment; a gaming house is spelled casinò, with an accent.[rx][rx][rx]
Not all casinos are used for gaming. The Catalina Casino, overlooking Avalon Harbor on Santa Catalina Island, California, has never been used for traditional games of chance, which were already outlawed in California by the time it was built.,[rx] The Copenhagen Casino was a theatre, known for the mass public meetings often held in its hall during the 1848 Revolution, which made Denmark a constitutional monarchy. Until 1937, it was a well-known Danish theatre.[rx] The Hanko Casino in Hanko, Finland—one of that town’s most conspicuous landmarks—was never used for gambling. Rather, it was a banquet hall for the Russian nobility which frequented this spa resort in the late 19th century and is now used as a restaurant.[rx] . In military and non-military usage in German and Spanish, a casino or kasino is an officers’ mess.
History of gambling houses
The precise origin of gambling is unknown. It is generally believed that gambling in some form or another has been seen in almost every society in history. From the Ancient Greeks and Romans to Napoleon’s France and Elizabethan England, much of history is filled with stories of entertainment based on games of chance.
The first known European gambling house, not called a casino although meeting the modern definition, was the Ridotto, established in Venice, Italy, in 1638 by the Great Council of Venice to provide controlled gambling during the carnival season. It was closed in 1774 as the city government felt it was impoverishing the local gentry.[rx]
In American history, early gambling establishments were known as saloons. The creation and importance of saloons were greatly influenced by four major cities: New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, and San Francisco. It was in the saloons that travelers could find people to talk to, drink with, and often gamble with. During the early 20th century in America, gambling was outlawed by state legislation. However, in 1931, gambling was legalized throughout the state of Nevada, where America’s first legalized casinos were set up. In 1976 New Jersey allowed gambling in Atlantic City, now America’s second largest gambling city.
Gambling in casinos
Customers gamble by playing games of chance, in some cases with an element of skill, such as craps, roulette, baccarat, blackjack, and video poker. Most games have mathematically determined odds that ensure the house has at all times an advantage over the players. This can be expressed more precisely by the notion of expected value, which is uniformly negative (from the player’s perspective). This advantage is called the house edge. In games such as poker where players play against each other, the house takes a commission called the rake. Casinos sometimes give out complimentary items or comps to gamblers. Payout is the percentage of funds (“winnings”) returned to players. Casinos in the United States say that a player staking money won from the casino is playing with the house’s money.
Video Lottery Machines (slot machines) have become one of the most popular forms of gambling in casinos. As of 2011 investigative reports have started calling into question whether the modern-day slot-machine is addictive.[rx]
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