A casino is a place where people can gamble and play games of chance. Some casinos are more lavish than others and add luxuries like restaurants, free drinks, stage shows and dramatic scenery. But at their core, all casinos are designed to make money from people willing to risk it all for the chance of winning big.

This is done by encouraging players to stay longer and take more risks than they would at home, where they are in control of how much money they wager and when they decide to stop. But the gambling business isn’t just about attracting players and keeping them there — it’s also about ensuring that the money they wager is fair.

That’s why a casino needs to carefully monitor its gaming operations. A casino’s security personnel are trained to look for suspicious betting patterns that could indicate cheating or other illegal activity. Elaborate surveillance systems allow security workers to watch every table, window and doorway from a room filled with banks of video screens.

It’s also why casinos are known to give comps to people who play a lot of their games — they want to reward good behavior with free hotel rooms, dinners, show tickets and even limo service and airline tickets. But these gifts come at a price, because they reduce the amount of money the casino pays out in winnings to its customers. And that’s one of the ways the house always has an advantage over the players.