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What is something that happens at casinos that is hidden from the public?
Main Post: What is something that happens at casinos that is hidden from the public?
Top Comment: Just how much money goes unclaimed/uncollected. I worked in the accounting department at one of the main gaming conglomerates and was tasked with cleaning up their unclaimed property accounts. There were players aka "whales" who'd deposited millions and just forgot about it for years.
Is it actually possible to win at casinos?
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So, I’ve seen videos and posts talking about gambling, and people putting a Hell of a lot of money on different ways of gambling at casinos. Can you even win? And if you do, how’s the money given to you? Do casinos just have hundreds of thousands of dollars they can give out?
I’ve never gambled, or been in a casino before. So I don’t get it, I don’t understand how it works. What’s the point of gambling? Is it like the lottery?
Top Comment: Yeah, though the casino obviously knows the odds are in their favor or they wouldn’t offer the games. They don’t even really care if you win, because they make so much from the many others who don’t.
Casino(1995)
Casino based on the book by Nicholas Pileggi, revolves around Sam Rothstein(Robert De Niro), an expert handicapper, asked to look after the Tangiers Casino in Las Vegas by the Chicago Outfit. While he successfully manages to get the Casino into profits, he has to deal with his hot headed friend Nicky Santoro(Joe Pesci), whose own parallel criminal activites, get the attention of the law.
There is also the gold digger Ginger McKenna(Sharon Stone), a former hustler, who marries him for the money, while cheating on the side with her long time boyfriend Lester Diamond(James Woods).
Often overshadowed by other Marty gangster classics like Goodfellas, Mean Streets, personally would rate this among my favorites. The story though has shades of Mean Streets a lot, two friends in crime, and one having to face problems due to his hot headed friend's criminal activities. In a sense Robert De Niro reprises Harvey Keitel's role in Mean Streets, while Pesci's role is similiar to De Niro's in that movie. The relationship between these two is well depicted.
Marty's movies have pretty good detailing, and it's so in this movie, as he depicts the nitty gritties of the casino operations. Especially loved the tracking shot, that goes inside the casino, showing the counting rooms, the back room operations.
Another favorite scene is where Sam catches the scammers, superbly shot, and the showdown in the desert between Sam and Nicky.
De Niro is as brilliant as ever, as Sam, bringing in the right gravitas to the role, while Pesci more or less reprises his Goodfellas role.
Sharon Stone, stripped off her Diva image, playing a down at the hells, opportunist hustler does quite well too.
Other good performances too by James Woods as the conman.
Worth a watch.
Top Comment: While not considered to be one of his “top” movies, I find Casino immensely rewatchable. He captures old Vegas perfectly (shot in the now-demolished Riveria). The aesthetics are great -the cars and costuming. The performances are fascinating and, like all Scorcese movies, the music fits the scene perfectly. I could watch Pesci and Deniro all day. It’s also such an insane story that the “factual” things are some of the more outlandish aspects of the movie! The book is a great read as well. Love Casino and it’s one of those “several times a year” watches in my house!
Casino Workers Of Reddit, what’s the worst loss or worst case of gambling addiction you’ve seen?
Main Post: Casino Workers Of Reddit, what’s the worst loss or worst case of gambling addiction you’ve seen?
Top Comment: Well I have 16 years in the casino business. I was a dealer for about 3 years and a pit boss for 9. The saddest thing I had witnessed happened over time. There was a genuinely very nice couple that came in and played Let it Ride. The game is atrocious odds-wise, utterly boring, and I was always miserable dealing it. The woman was in her early 50s, quite overweight, and wheelchair bound and the husband was very thin and mousey. The husband was always the one to play, and the wife would sit behind him. They didn't even bet heavily, but they were there 7 days a week for hours and hours a day, weeks in a row. As time went on they stopped being as nice, to the staff and to each other. They were both obviously not taking care of themselves as they had been...hygenically speaking. Eventually one night, the husband turned around to ask the wife for more money and she absolutely broke down in a shaking, sobbing fit. Just uncontrollably, inconsolable. He was pretty demanding and she was slow handing over the last couple of 20s out of her purse and she said - "Tom this is it....if you lose this we won't eat this month." I absolutely refused to take the money, called my supervisor over and explained the situation, and thankfully, unlike a lot of joints, they backed that decision up. That was very early on in my career and it really hit me hard that I had taken 10s of thousands of dollars from those people. If I remember right we evicted them lifetime and connected them with the state problem gambling service. When I was a pit boss, watching a table in high limit I saw a guy buy in for 5,000 and run it up to about 250,000 by the time I went home. Badass run. So I come back in the next day at 5pm and the guy is still there. Not surprising. The guy has about 125k in chips in front of him so I say oh man Dave took a bit of a thumping while I was sleeping. The pit boss I was relieving was standing off to the side making the STOP TALKING gesture so I chuckled and went over to get him relieved. Turns out the guy had given it all back....and was in 350,000 more. Oof. Probably the craziest thing I had seen in all of those years was a guy, again in high limit (I was there all the damn time once I was a pit boss) who got beat up all night. Just hours of just getting thumped, after a particularly nasty beat on some splits and double downs he said "I lose one more hand I'm shitting on the floor." I informed him that would be a super bad idea and went over to call surveillance and security. It was right at the end of a shoe so this I'm calling while the dealer is shuffling. Security is up there close, but not too close. Surveillance is watching. First hand out of the shoe dealer 10...peaks ...rolls over the ace. Quicker than I could blink the dude has his pants down grunting. Gaming commission and security were none to happy arresting the guy...but I was entertained.
Chicago casino refuses to pay out winnings to gambler
Main Post: Chicago casino refuses to pay out winnings to gambler
Top Comment: Did they keep the money from the bets he lost? If so, he deserves to be paid because those were valid bets, right? Not a refund "we'll return the lost bets after the results to strengthen our position" but did they see THEIR winnings and raise no alarm or issue? It's on them to have systems in place to stop his bets as he was making them. In disguise, incognito and at a kiosk or not they are a vice distributor. If their system took the bets, raised no issue on his losses and only raised the flag at his winnings...they should pay him. If they never accepted his losses either, I'd take no side.
Casino strategies?
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One of my friends swears that there are strategies with slots. Are there really any strategies or is he full of crap?
Top Comment: He’s full of crap. You can find “must hit by” bonuses and play when they will be close but that’s about it.
ELI5 : How are casinos and online casinos exactly rigged against you
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I'm not gambler and never gambled in my life so i know absolutely nothing about it. but I'm curious about how it works and the specific ways used against gamblers so that the house always wins at the end of the day, like is it just an odds thing where the lower your odds of winning the more likely u are to lose all of your money, is it really that simple or am i just dumb?
Top Comment: The odds are just so that on average you’ll lose money. For example if a roulette wheel only had red and black squares then a bet for on red (or black, odds, evens) would win for you as often as it does for the house, but the addition of the green 0 square nudges the odds in the casino’s favour.