A casino is a place where champagne glasses clink and people laugh, even as they try their luck at games like blackjack or roulette. With lights flashing and music blaring, the atmosphere is one of excitement and anticipation. But the truth is that a casino is a place where most players lose money. And while it’s easy to get swept up in the comradery of the other gamblers, it’s important to remember that their successes don’t increase your own chances of winning.

To combat this, casinos employ a variety of psychological tricks to encourage people to play. They offer free drinks because they know that alcohol decreases people’s inhibitions and encourages them to spend more of their money. They also use scents to create an intoxicating environment and often arrange the games in a maze-like pattern with no straight aisles to discourage people from leaving. They even tint the windows to obscure the daylight, so that people are unable to tell what time of day it is.

Despite its graphic depictions of violence and treachery, Casino is an engaging movie that manages to keep the viewer riveted until the very end. And although it’s one of Martin Scorsese’s longest films, the film never lags or runs out of steam. This is partly because Casino is an epic history lesson of Vegas, showing how mafia corruption and greed paved the way for huge gambling corporations to take over this desert city.