Casino – Nine Casino Tricks

Casino is a movie about gambling, but it’s also a movie about the ways we trick ourselves into throwing hundreds or even thousands of dollars away based on the literal roll of the dice, spin of the wheel, or draw of the cards. In the end, the house always wins. But how do casinos get us to spend so much money — people who work hard for their income and make reasoned financial decisions on a day-to-day basis?

The answer lies in the way casinos use lighting, sound, and physical design to create an environment that is at once welcoming yet hard to step away from. This article explores nine tricks that casinos employ to keep patrons spending their money.

One of the most obvious is the constant flow of alcohol. Booze lowers inhibitions, makes it easier to forget how many rounds you’ve had, and allows you to bet more. As a result, casinos serve nonstop alcohol — often for free — to gamblers at the tables, in front of the slots, or in front of the horse-racing screens. Casinos also tint the windows so that the sun doesn’t bother players and they can’t tell what time it is.

But perhaps the most crucial aspect of a casino’s profitability is its built-in advantage over patrons, known as “the house edge.” In blackjack or Spanish 21, for example, the odds against a player beating the house are virtually zero, even if you are playing perfect basic strategy. In games where there is a skill element, the house advantage is more complicated and varies by game rules and number of decks. But it’s never insignificant.

In a city that’s become all but synonymous with louche, unsavory behavior, the movie’s most important message is the way casinos use money to control the masses and to mask their criminal activities. It’s a narrative that echoes the period in which detective novels emerged as an authority figure that blended traditional (institutional and intuitive) and new modes of discovery, a figure capable of withstanding the epistemological tremors that roil the world around them.

The plot of Casino is, of course, liminal as well — not between Victorianism and Modernism but between finance and the frontier, between corporate antisepticity and the rough blur of organized crime and big business colliding with it. This clash is captured in the tension between De Niro’s and Pesci’s characters.

Casino is a riveting crime drama that’s a lot more than just another Vegas-set flick. In addition to its sharp cast and slick production, the film offers an in-depth view of a mob empire that reached into Las Vegas, Teamster unions, Midwest mafiosi, politicians, and beyond. A must-see for any film buff.