Casino is one of the more complex and well-crafted films by master director Martin Scorsese. While Goodfellas was a ground-level view of mafia families, Casino takes it a step further and focuses on the guys who control those mafia families – and how their own poor decisions slowly lead them to destruction. It’s an interesting story about how no one can stay on top forever, and it’s a tale that is very easy to identify with.<\/p>\n
The film stars Robert De Niro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein, a gambling expert and handicapper who is hired by the Chicago Outfit to run the Tangiers Casino in Las Vegas. He struggles with his bosses and also with a drug-addicted con-artist trophy wife (Sharon Stone) and loose-cannon mob enforcer Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci). The movie is inspired by the nonfiction book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas written by Nicholas Pileggi and Scorsese.<\/p>\n
It’s important to note that casinos are highly competitive businesses. They must compete with other casinos, non-gambling resorts, on-line gaming, private gambling and an illegal casino business that is much larger than their legal counterparts. Because of this, casinos must offer incentives to attract and keep gamblers. This can include free spectacular entertainment, free luxurious living quarters and even reduced-fare transportation and hotel room rates.<\/p>\n
In addition, to catch cheaters, casinos train dealers and other floor staff to watch for suspicious behavior as well as install eye-in-the-sky video cameras and radio frequency identification tags in chips, which alert security if the chips aren’t where they should be. Despite the high stakes and risks involved, casino games are fun, exciting, and offer several mental health benefits for humans who choose to play them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"