The lurid drama Casino, starring Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone, takes us back to a time when the mob ran Vegas. It’s a time of brash gangster characters and sexy showgirls, of high rollers and big bets. But it also reveals how the mafia lost control of a city that was minting money in the billions.

A casino is an establishment where people can gamble on games of chance and skill, such as poker, roulette, blackjack, and craps. A casino’s employees, often called dealers, run the games and collect the winnings. The house takes a percentage of the total bets, which is called the rake. In the case of table games, the house also takes a cut of the profits from each player, known as the edge.

Casinos use a number of tricks to keep players gambling longer and spending more money. They use a mix of sounds, lights, and physical design to create an atmosphere that’s exciting and fun, but hard to step away from. For example, they use digital credits instead of cash to make it harder for people to keep track of how much they’re spending. They also don’t have clocks or windows so that it’s impossible to know what time of day it is. This makes it easier for people to ignore basic needs like sleep and food.

Casinos are also famous for offering free drinks to their guests, which can cloud their judgment. They can also take advantage of the sunk cost fallacy, in which people continue to place bets they’ve already lost because they don’t want to admit they’ve made a bad decision.