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casino

Building or room used for gambling. The term originally referred to a public hall for music and dancing, but by the later 19th cent. it had come to denote a gaming house, particularly one in which card and dice games were played. Today casinos are places where gamblers can risk their money against a common gambler (called the banker or house), and they have an almost uniform character throughout the world. One of the oldest and best-known casinos is that at Monte Carlo, founded in 1861. Others include those at Cannes and Nice (France), Corfu (Greece), Baden-Baden (Germany), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and Las Vegas and Reno. The casino in Havana was closed after the 1959 revolution. Casino gambling was introduced in Atlantic City, N.J., in 1978, and from the 1980s casinos began appearing on Amer. Indian reservations, which are not subject to state anti-gambling statutes. U.S. casino gambling has expanded vastly in recent decades as gambling has become legal in more states, particularly as a riverboat operation.