From the glitz of the Las Vegas strip to the illegal pai gow tables in Chinatown, over 51 million people — or about one quarter of adults over 21 — visited a casino last year. Many of them, probably most of them, came away empty-handed, as casinos are carefully engineered to slowly bleed patrons for cash. But if you know what to look for, there are some ways to beat the house.
For starters, skip the free alcohol. Casinos offer so much of it because they know that tipsy people tend to lose more games, and the alcoholic beverages boost their profits. And don’t rely on “lucky” streaks to keep playing. In reality, you’re more likely to win if you stick with a table game like blackjack or roulette than on a slot machine, because the house has a lower edge in those games. But if the casino spots you counting cards, it reserves the right to show you the door.
Unlike other epic crime dramas, like Goodfellas and Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese’s Casino isn’t mainly concerned with character or plot. It’s more interested in exposing the intricate web of corruption that centered on Vegas, with tentacles reaching into politicians, Teamsters unions, and the Chicago mob and Midwest mafia based out of Kansas City. And it does so in a movie that feels almost like a documentary at times, thanks to its use of voice-over and its extensive, uncut use of music.