Casino Wars Facts - National Geographic Investigates

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Facts: Casino Wars

Photograph by Hossam Aboul-Magd / Garrett Park Films, LLC

The U.S. gaming industry's gross revenue in 2009 was close to $100 billion dollars. 5.5 billion dollars came from the Las Vegas Strip, followed by Atlantic City, with close to 4 billion dollars.

Mobster Bugsy Siegel named his casino "Flamingo" after the long legs of his girlfriend.

Advantage play techniques such as card counting are not considered cheating except in Nevada, where auxiliary devices have been outlawed due to the unique ability of the state's gambling industry to influence legislation. In almost all jurisdictions, casinos are permitted to ban from their premises customers they believe are using advantage play, regardless of whether they are in fact doing so and even though it is not cheating.

The Las Vegas City Center reportedly cost over $8.5 billion. It is set on 67 acres on the Strip and consists of 4 hotels, a casino, residential condominiums and a retail and entertainment district. The project is the largest privately financed development in US history.

The Surveillance Monitor room at the Aria Hotel and Casino is approximately 5000 sq ft. There are 64 total monitors and 7 individual workstations. 360-degree cameras ensure that close to 100% of the casino floor is covered 24/7.

Statistics compiled by the Nevada Gaming Commission indicate that between 1999-2000, approximately 34 percent of those arrested for theft or cheating in casinos were the casinos' own staff members.

Facial recognition technology focuses on the eyes and translates the image of a face into a numerical code that is then compared against other faces.

Bringing Down the House and the movie 21 are both inspired by the experiences of Jeff Ma, who was a student at M.I.T. in the mid-1990s when he was recruited to join a secret blackjack card-counting team. Ma is no longer allowed to play blackjack in most casinos in Las Vegas – though the casinos welcome him at other games.

During the past two decades, the casino workforce has increased by nearly 80 percent, from 198,657 employees in 1990 to 357,314 in 2008. In 2008, the commercial casino industry had more direct employees than the U.S. automobile industry, software manufacturers, and wireless phone carriers.

Currently, the casinos keep any unclaimed winnings after 60 days and pay normal gaming tax on it. Unclaimed winnings are estimated at between $20 million and $35 million.

The Aria's gambling stations have updatable and changeable games controlled and monitored by the Aria's 3000-square-foot data center. The stations, which have hi-def screens that are each run by a Mac Mini, give the house stats on which games are the most popular, allowing the control room to change them accordingly.

Non-obvious relationship awareness (NORA) software allows casinos to determine quickly if a potentially colluding player and dealer have ever shared a phone number or a room at the casino hotel, or lived at the same address. The software was created for the gaming industry, but the technology proved so effective that Homeland Security adapted it to sniff out connections between suspected terrorists. Now it’s used as business intelligence for banks, insurance companies, and retailers.

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