When you walk into a casino, the lights flash, champagne glasses clink, and the air is thick with excitement. But this is not just any casino; it’s one designed to manipulate you into spending more money than you intended to. From the layout to the sounds and even physical design, casinos use a variety of tricks to make it hard for people to walk away. Business Insider takes a closer look at the ways these establishments are designed to keep you in their grasp.
Casino is Martin Scorsese’s most frank depiction of the dark side of Las Vegas. It is not simply a movie about corruption and greed, but a study of the human toll of such activities. While the characters in this story are mired in violence, treachery, and avarice, the audience still finds itself rooting for them at times. This is particularly true for the character played by Sharon Stone, whose rise to prominence is built on a foundation of manipulation and ruthlessness.
Beneath the varnish of free cocktails and brightly blinking slot machines, however, casinos are engineered to slowly bleed patrons of their cash. While many mathematically inclined physicists have tried to turn the tables on this system by using knowledge of probability and game theory, these efforts have largely been unsuccessful. Despite their best efforts, the house will always win in the long run. This is a fact that gamblers should be aware of before they start throwing their dollars at the slots.