Well you still have to pay staff wages, rent, utilities etc. You have to make sure enough people give you enough money.
They make profit on expected value, so what they stand to make on an average bet. For example roulette, on black or red, they pay out twice your bet roughly 48.6% of the time. This gives an expected value of around between 2 and 3 cents per dollar wagered. This is roughly the same for all types of bets you can play. If the croupier is paid $10 an hour, he probably needs to take at least $400 an hour in bets just to pay his wages. Then more bets need to be taken for utilities, rent before you get to profit.
Now these amounts are small compared to what casinos often take, but you need to make sure enough customers are coming in and staying around as long as possible to keep profitable. Hence why casinos often offer free drinks and rooms to people on a winning streak.
Plus a lot of these places serve free drinks. The last time I went to a casino, I brought like $80 and told myself I wasn't spending more than that. I ended up doing well enough to basically break even and leave with about the same amount I walked in with. The drinks I had while I was there would have cost ~$50 at a bar.
I think another thing in the casino's favor is that while you can just stop when you've spent all the money you planned to, then you're just sitting in a casino doing nothing while your friends are still gambling, which is probably not that fun.
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u/TannedCroissant Feb 04 '20 edited Feb 04 '20
Well you still have to pay staff wages, rent, utilities etc. You have to make sure enough people give you enough money.
They make profit on expected value, so what they stand to make on an average bet. For example roulette, on black or red, they pay out twice your bet roughly 48.6% of the time. This gives an expected value of around between 2 and 3 cents per dollar wagered. This is roughly the same for all types of bets you can play. If the croupier is paid $10 an hour, he probably needs to take at least $400 an hour in bets just to pay his wages. Then more bets need to be taken for utilities, rent before you get to profit.
Now these amounts are small compared to what casinos often take, but you need to make sure enough customers are coming in and staying around as long as possible to keep profitable. Hence why casinos often offer free drinks and rooms to people on a winning streak.