Stuff You Should Know - How Casinos Work

Episode Date: September 13, 2011

Gambling predates the written word; dice made of bones have been discovered at prehistoric sites. Today, the concept of amassing a fortune in moments remains attractive. Join Josh and Chuck as they take a look at the games and the glitz of casinos. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know. The podcast. Yes, it is. Chuck. Josh. How's it going? Great. I'm excited about this one. Really? Do you know my favorite casino or favorite

Scorsese movies casino? No way. Is it really? I think I used to say it was a close second to Goodfellas, but I believe this is Edge. I watched it again the other day, man, and I love Casino the movie. Okay, I'll give it to you. It might edge Goodfellas out. I can't believe you're saying that, but to each his own, we always say. To me, it's like flip a coin. That mean streets and Goodfellas, just like either of those three, they're all different. I've not seen mean streets. Should I? Yeah, I know that was the first one he did with Denier Owens. Yeah, and Harvey Cattel. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Casinos. Casinos. Well, now we've already talked about the movie, so are you still excited about this one? No. Okay. Get your favorite part out. I read

that casino winnings for June in Las Vegas, Nevada, or in Nevada as a whole, were up 16% over last year. Hey, that's good. Which is a good sign because one of the things that are pretty much recession proof are stocks in vices, basically, like liquor company stock, tobacco company stock, and gambling company stock. By gambling company, of course, I mean like a casino or something like that. But with the recession of 2008, even those kind of stocks were taking a hit. It was that much of a bath. Wow. So in the midst of all this talk about like a double-dip recession and the downgrade by Moody's to double A plus for government bonds, the fact that the revenue in Nevada for gambling is up 16% is a good sign. Conversely,

it's down like 8% in Atlantic City. But that's Atlantic City. AC has struggled on and off over the years. Since like the beginning, right? Yeah. I mean, even Trump took a bath there. Yeah. Literally and figuratively. Yes. So I mean, you've been to plenty of casinos, right? You spend most of your time there. Not true, but I've been to Vegas a bunch. Just live in LA, you go more than your average Joe White. Yeah. Because it's close, you can drive, work jobs there, film jobs and stuff. I've been to Vegas a few times and I think those are the only casinos I've ever been to. I hate it. Or ones in Vegas. I hate Vegas now. Do you? Yeah, man. I'm done. I like it. I like it if you go into Vegas with like a Vegas kind of mindset. Yeah. It's fun. I mean, I wouldn't

ever spend like my yearly vacation there. Right. But I mean, a few days in Vegas, it's pretty cool. I like it. I'm not a big gambler though either. So I don't go there and like there's not a chance that I'm going to come out of there like my life is ruined. See, I love to gamble, but I don't do it. I do too, but I'm not a big game. Like I can walk away at any time. Yeah, me too. Yeah. I just enjoy it, but I don't do it. So it's weird to say that I love gambling. What's your game? Oh, you know, Blackjack Sportsbook. I think I told you before on the show that I usually go into the sportsbook and throw down some bets and depending how I do on those, I'll gamble with that money. Gotcha. At the tables. Gotcha. It's fun. Okay. I'm going to have to try that next time

because I usually just walk up to the roulette table and go, here's some money. Oh, I lost. Here's a little more. I've never lost money faster in my life than at a roulette table. Yeah, it is pretty fast, but when it hits, it is thrilling. I'm sure it is. That's what they count on. Yeah. So Chuck, you know, Casino's gambling itself is pretty ancient. The Grabster who wrote this article and included a Monty Python reference. Did you catch it? I don't know if I did. He mentions the Italian Inquisition. Oh, very nice. The noble people expected the Italian Inquisition. Pretty good. And we're never caught gambling. But there's been dice found in prehistoric sites. That's awesome. There's something called Ostrogali and they're carved knuckle bones that

were the predecessors of dice. Yeah, they look kind of like molars. Yeah, a little bit. And then after that were actual primitives, excited dice. That's right. And so we've been gambling. We've been shooting crabs at least for eons. Well, at the very least for millennia. But Casino's or places where you go to gamble didn't really come about until I think about the 15th or 16th century. And Venice was actually the birthplace of the Casino of the gambling hall. I love it. Yeah, it's Italian. Yeah, it's initially there were these aristocrats in Italy would have these private parties at places called a redote. And at the redote, it was a private club for rich folks. But it was basically a gambling club because that's what went on there. Right. And this is where

that the money python reference comes in where that it was it was illegal. Yeah, you weren't allowed to gamble. But the aristocrats knew when to expect the Italian inquisition. Yeah, and they didn't do a lot of inquiring from what I understand to right. So but it was known that like this is outlawed. But the I guess the fathers of Venice figured out that the people who were running the show there were making a ton of cash. Right. Oh, yeah. And if they set up their own redote, right, they could make their make that cash themselves. So they did. They set up what was called the redote with a capital R. I love that. It was a four story gambling house. Yeah, where they took all these different games and just put them under one roof. It was a casino. It was the

first casino. Yeah. Yeah. And they they even did things like give you food and beverages and keep you happy. And like you said, ran a variety of games. And the grabster points out this is a big deal for a couple of reasons. A it's government sanctioned gambling house. Right. The first time. And it's open to the general public. You can just go down to the redote, throw down some cash. You don't have to be an aristocrat or a noble person. Nope. You just go ahead and lay your money down. That's right. And actually the word casino is obviously Italian. Right. But that was different. So that was 1638 that Venice opened the redote. It didn't last forever. No, no, no. Eventually the tide of public moral opinion turned against it, which happens a lot to gambling. Yeah. And the

redote was shut down. So the the aristocrats went back to it again and went and started gambling again at what were called casinos, which are small little clubs. Right. Yeah. That's what it means. The casino is a small little club. Yeah. And then they added gambling to it and then hence the name that we know and love today casino. Yeah. So the redote was broken up into smaller casinos and they were pretty popular and flourished. Yeah. So that idea was exported from from Italy or there were other places where it just kind of came up on its own. But Italy, for the most part, is known as the birthplace of the casino. Yeah. France was big and France is known as the birthplace of most of the casino games that we play today. Yeah. Yeah. Roulette means little wheel in French. Yeah.

Baccarat means Bert Baccarat and Bert Becquerec in French. It means crystal. It's not true. And what else is there? Blackjack means 21, I believe, in French. Oh, yeah. Wow. I didn't know that. So basically the French invented a lot of games because they loved to gamble. They did. And so did the United States early on. The 1800s and the Wild West, they were gambling riverboats on the Mississippi. Yeah. Poker games and card games for money. And then kind of like with prohibition, the moral conservatism kind of came on and stemmed the tide of gambling for a while up until the Hoover Dam in Nevada kind of really put it back on the map again. Yeah. So legalized gambling. There was a huge, huge anti-gambling

wave in like 19, basically the first decade and a half of the 20th century. Yeah. And it almost wiped out horse racing entirely. Like there were like 250 horse racing tracks at like in 1900 in the U.S. And it went down to like 25 in like 30 years. So that same wave basically broke up all gambling until, like you say, Nevada said, you know what, we're going to buck the trend because there's not a lot going on here in Nevada. But we do have a new dam. Yeah. We're going to call it Hoover Dam eventually. But for now, let's call it Bowler Dam. And tourists got into come and seen it. Still do. Yeah. I mean, it is a marvel. Still this day, it's a marvel of engineering. It's the pinnacle of humans' contempt for nature, you know? Oh, you want to flow as a river? No.

We tell you when to flow. You're going to generate power for us instead. Exactly. So from the get-go, Bowler Dam, now Hoover Dam was a tourist attraction. And Nevada said, why not get some money off of these pork pies from Iowa while they come? Let's let them gamble. Yep. And that's what happened. And gambling and casinos had already been started. Bugsy Siegel did not start that. But he and Meyer Lansky, famous gangsters, did have a large hand in expanding the casino scene famously with the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in 1946. Yes. That was a good movie, too. That was a great movie. Bugsy. And today, I think this number is still right. 19 of the 25 largest hotels by room number are on the Las Vegas Strip. The largest in the world, 25 largest in the world. Yeah. I can

believe that. Sure. They're huge. And that's just, they're still gambling downtown, too. They're a Fremont if you really want the real Las Vegas. Yeah. So that's how it started. There were downtown gambling houses. And then they figured out that if you, you got to break some eggs to make an omelet. Yeah. So they spent some money to make tons of money. Tons of omelets. Yeah. And they also, in a very unusual kind of agreement, these early strip makers said, you know what, we're all going to go into this together. Sure, it's more competition, but if we're concentrated, we make this a destination, not only is Nevada, a destination for gambling, but this specific spot in Nevada is the destination for gambling.

That's right. And it paid off like an aces. Hey, nice. Thanks. Yeah. And since we're on gangsters, the mafia had a lot to do with the Las Vegas Casino operation for a long time until they eventually money kind of won out and real estate developers had more money than the mob. Yeah. Said, you know what? We need to clean this up and make it legit and buy you out, essentially. Yeah. And as I understand it, it's mafia doesn't have anything to do with it these days because it's just too big of a risk. Yeah. And their money is not needed for a while there. They had the money and they also had the willingness to one of the reasons the mob got into Vegas was because the rest of the country saw Vegas as Sin City. It's a place of ill repute. Gambling is sinful and we're morally

opposed to it. So I don't want my customers at my bank to withdraw their money so I can invest in your casino. Right. But then Meyer Lansky or... So there's other ways of getting money. Right. He said, you know what? I've got no problem with this. Yeah. Here's some money. The teamsters were heavily invested in Vegas. That's true. But yeah. But then Trump was like, I got way more money than you guys. Yeah. And that's why one reason Vegas was, was Sin City for a long time. And you can still get into some trouble there. But since the 90s, it has become a much more of a family destination. It's starting to swing back the other way a little more. I hear they're trying to do that. Some casinos are opening up with rules against

kids and... Oh yeah. Plenty of them have it. Yeah. It's like get your kid out of here. But there's also... This is a casino. Circus and Excalibur and with like nothing but kids. Treasure Island. Yeah. All those places. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course. Yes. They can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The

property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh, well, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao, the tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had

seen or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you win. Like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories. So I followed them deep into the jungle and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that, you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think, oh, all this for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate on the iHeart radio app, Apple

Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. And so, and we should say Chuck, that we just gave like the history of Vegas and Vegas is obviously like the crown jewel of the gambling world around the world. But there's also other like just world class casinos like Monaco, Monte Carlo, a city in Monaco, which is a principality built exclusively on gambling money. Yeah, like Vegas. Yeah. There's Macau is off the coast of Hong Kong. That's like gambling paradise now. Yeah. There's where else is there? There's riverboats. There's Indian reservations. Yeah. So it's, we didn't mean to neglect anybody. I guess is what I'm saying. And the, you know, that four story gambling house, the Rodoto. Yeah. That has translated very, very well in Japan.

They have things that are called Pachinko parlors, which are usually multi story outfits where you just, is it all Pachinko? The first floor is usually all Pachinko. Gotcha. And it's also like you, you, you can go in there and play all day and no one will know because you can't see through the cigarette smoke in there. It is crazy. I bet. Yeah. They smoke a lot over there. So there's gambling all over the world. We're aware of that. Yeah. I got some stats, some gaming stats. In 2009, 70% of US adults placed a wager of some kind to the tune of $900 billion at casinos, race tracks, lottery, and then like poker games and dog tracks and OTB places and stuff like that. Yeah. But I'm, I think of that gross

gaming revenue was 80.5 billion and about 57 billion of that was casino based, whether land or riverboat casinos. Wow. 30, 30 billion, 26 of that was from tribal casinos and the other 30 was from just standard casinos. That's definitely up from when this article was written because it was 22.62 billion in 2005 for a Native American casinos and 31.85 billion for everything else in the US. Wow. Yeah. That's significant. Yeah. Yeah. And that's 41 states. 41 states have casinos. Yeah. Allow casinos. Georgia's not one of them. No, but Georgia allows gambling in the form of lotteries. Yes. And video poker. Yeah. Everything but Hawaii and Utah allow some form of wagering. Right. I wonder what Hawaii's deal is.

I don't know. Utah makes sense. Yeah. Totally. But I have no idea what Hawaii's. Maybe there's like, yeah, we don't need that. Yeah. I'll find out. We're surfing, eating spam. Right. Exactly. It's a spamcation. Sure. So, Chuck, why is there so much money in gambling? If it's all games of chance. Yeah. Why is there so much money in owning a casino? You know why, Josh? Why? Because every single game a casino offers has a statistical edge built in for the casino. Otherwise, that's how they make their dough. Yeah. That is, there's your fact that these are not games of chance. Everyone knows that. I didn't know that. Sure. Well, it ranges from, think about the lowest you can get is a bakara at about 1.6%.

It can go as low as I think 0.7. 0.6 something. Yeah. Is the casino advantage all the way up to the suckers bet of all time, which is the slot machine, which gives the casino a 25% edge on average. And the reason it stops at 25% is because by law, most states say if you're going to have slots or a video poke or whatever, since it's computer operated randomly and making air quotes, you have to set it so that there's 75% of the time they have a chance of winning. Yeah. 25% of the time you're playing that you have no chance of winning. Yeah. And they'll, they'll change the slots. Some casinos will say like our slots pay out 80% or 90% to try and get you in there. But that is where the casino makes 70% of their revenue is from

slots. From slots. Nickel slots, quarter slots, whatever. Whatever slots. Yeah. There's a, are we talking about games? Yeah, let's get into it. So yeah, if you go to a casino, there's obviously going to be slots in there absolutely everywhere. I've never been a big slot guy. It's just over too fast. There's not too much to it. It is a little boring. I like Blackjack. Blackjack's a lot of fun. I played Blackjack in Paris in Vegas. And it was like the middle of the day. And my brother-in-law and I were the only ones at the table. And I was like, hit me. And the guy hit me. And I was like, hit me again. And the dealer went and just shook his head. I've had them do that too. And I was like, oh, okay. You don't want to hit. Yeah. And I'm sure

the pit boss is like, you know, he's got X number of times he can do that in a day or whatever. But yeah, I thought it was very nice. I ended up spending more money. I'm sure. Well, that's exactly why he did it. They want to keep your butt in that chair. And sometimes they might allow the dealer to say like, are you certain, sir? Wait a minute. He didn't do it to be nice. He may have been being nice. He was definitely being nice. But yes, I'm sure overall. He may be instructed. I don't know. I don't know how it works on the inside. But yeah, I was told not to. He said no when I told him. Right. And I came out a little bit on top, I think. So Blackjack Josh, you got about a 2% house edge. Not bad. As far as gambling goes. And if you play

by the statistical strategy that they say you should play by, there are rules like if you follow this, then chances are you could win some money. But people, what happens is you get caught up. You like it when you shouldn't. You lay down more money to try and make up for what you've lost. Yeah. And that's when they take you. Yeah. Or you can count cards. And you can count cards, which is legal. If you go to MIT, they'll teach you how to count cards, right? Yeah. And know what that movie was about? Yeah, the MIT Blackjack team. For the movie 21. If you count cards and they figure out that you're counting cards, you're gone. I don't think they can break your hand, but you're out of the casino for sure. They can

do a lot of things up until that point to make it harder. But I think if they verify that, and they know that you're counting cards, I think they can't ask you to leave, even though it is not against the law. No, but a casino has rules against it. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So that's Blackjack. Got to come closest to 21 without going over. Oh, yeah. Did we say that? Yeah. And we're not going to, there's, we're not going to break down each of these games so specifically. No, each of these could have their own podcasts. Yeah, exactly. They won't, but they could. So that's, that's that slots. By the way, there are spam slots. Yeah. That's cool. Booking night slots.

That's what we need is, we need to stuff. You should know slot machine. Well, there are all kinds of crazy themes, but the nights, the terminator, you realize how much we would have arrived if we had our own slot machines. That'd be cool. We'd go broke playing them. I bet we could make that happen. I don't know about that. No. Okay. So you got boogie nights. Oh yeah. Just all sorts of crazy themes. And recently it was in the news because they're happy days machines and everyone but Fonzie and Richie sued because they're like, dude, we're not getting any money from these slot machines that all my friends are telling me that our faces are on. That's what happy days sued for.

I thought it was like DVDs and stuff like that. No, no, no. It's all sorts of back payment that they say they're not getting, but the slots is what tipped off the mom. Like someone called her. It's like, oh, I saw you on a slot machine. She's like, really? Huh? So she banded together with Potsy and. Yeah. Everybody except Fonzie and Richie. Richie. Because they still have money. Yeah. Wow. That's an awful thing to say. I imagine that they didn't. When I read that, I didn't know that it was slot machines that tipped them off, but I thought, I hope Ron Howard like paid for their legal team. Yeah. I think they just settled recently, actually. That's good. Yeah. Roulette, of course, one of my favorites. Yeah. If you want to see

your money disappear before your very eyes, go play some roulette. Yeah. So there's 36 spaces on a little wheel. Numbers one through, no, I'm sorry. There's 38 spaces. Numbers one through 36 with a zero and a double zero. Right? Yeah. Very, very simply put, the dealer spins the wheel. You got black and red too. Yeah. Well, you can, you can bet on all sorts of things. Sure. There's a table where you bet on, you can bet on it being. A color. Landing on a black or a red color. You can bet on the specific number and the color. Just the number. I'm going to bet on 22 and it comes up and it pays off. Well, yeah. And depending if you, I think it pays two to one, if you, if you correctly bet on red or black and then it just gets more escalate from there. Yeah. But

the dealer spins the wheel and then a ball is dropped in and it spins around and bounces and then whatever number color it lands on, if you bet on that baby, you are rolling in it. But I think roulette, I think the reason I like it, it's just so, it's such an elegant game. There's a wheel that spins and you feel like you're in Monte Carlo. Very much so. Yeah. I think that's why I like roulette the most. House edge is between five and seven percent, even though it varies because there's so many different bets and payouts. Right. Craps. Craps I know almost nothing about. It's the most fun game in Vegas or at a casino in my opinion. It's the most social game. You hear a lot of people having a lot of fun and chances

are it's coming from the crap section. Yeah. Because you're involved, you're throwing the dice, that has a lot to do with it. And my advice, if you want to play craps, it's really complicated with all the bets, but make it really easy and pick out like learn two or three little simple bets that you can make and just stick to those. Okay. It's good advice. That's my advice. Unless you're really good and you know all that stuff, then just go wild. Right. If you know all that stuff, probably not going to take our advice on crabs. Kino Josh is a big rip off. Well, it's like the lottery inside the casino. There was a scandal. Some guy from Vegas who worked at the Nevada Gaming Commission, they use random number generators to just run the Kino games. It's all

computer operated. The thing is, is there's no such thing as randomness with a computer. Like it just doesn't exist. It's a computer, right? It's a program. So this guy figured out basically the pattern that comes up, the underlying pattern to all of it. And he and a buddy went to Atlantic City and he stayed up in the room and watched the Kino play out basically on their TV. And he called down to the guy and told him what to bet based on what numbers were about to come up. And this guy won so much that the security followed him up to the room and found the guy there, found out he was from Vegas and were like, why'd you come to Atlantic City to play Kino? And that was that. That was in an article in Harper's. You know what happened to him?

He got busted. I'm sure he doesn't work in a new hole in the desert. I don't know if Atlantic City has that kind of pull in Vegas though, where they can, you know, rub you out. They don't dig a hole in the desert there. They just do the old cement shoes in the ocean. Oh yeah. So you put the fishes toss you off the boardwalk. Yeah. But then you have to pay for the guy you just killed to the people in Vegas, right? Yeah. Okay. You got Baccarat, which we've talked about. And if you've never played it, it seems complicated, but it's really not. The object is to get close to nine instead of 21, but you only get two or three cards. And the total, if it's more than 10, you defer to the right hand number.

So if you get a nine and a six, your hand isn't 15. Your hand is five. If you get a nine and six, your hand isn't 15. It's five. Where does the five come from in there? One five. It's the digit on the right hand side. If your hand total is 13, your hand is really a three. If it's a 12, it's really a two. A nine and a six. There's no five in there. No. A nine and a six. Total 15. Oh, I got you. So you add it up and then take the right hand digit of the double digit. Yes. Okay. And your object is, yes, it's, I mean, it's not easy, but it sort of is easy. That I've never played because as pointed out in the article, like it's usually high rollers away from the rest of the casino. And yeah, it's like you have to be wearing a

tuxigan into the Baccarat part. Typically known as a big money game. Yeah. Because the guys, because, you know, why? It's because it's got the best or the least amount of statistical advantage. So if you've got a lot of money, you're probably smarter to be playing Baccarat. Yeah. And because of that low statistical advantage, a lot of times casinos say, hey, thanks for playing. You owe us 3% of everything you just won. Yeah. I think Baccarat is one of those that takes it off the top, right? Is that right? I think so. I would imagine pokers like that as well. It's called a rake in poker. Yeah. They essentially just, what you're doing in poker is they're hosting the game essentially

and supplying you with a dealer for a fee. Right. So sometimes you're charged. The rake will be based on how long you spend in there or how much you win, that kind of thing. Yeah. But poker's poker. That's right. Right. And then there's video poker, which is pretty close to slots that has laws that say you have to pay out X percentage of time, that kind of thing. Another sucker game, if you ask me. Yeah. They have those all over the place here in Atlanta, like in gas stations and stuff. Oh yeah. Oh, and interestingly, slots in video poker aren't monitored. They're just set up and you just go play. They don't have cameras above each one, like they do all the other games. Yeah. Well, they don't have people watching the slots area.

Yeah. They're self-managed essentially. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty.

Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh, well, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao. The tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw this tax of cash in our

office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex that sucks you in. Like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories. So I followed them deep into the jungle and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that, you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think all this for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions while chocolate on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

So Chuck, let's talk about the casino experience, shall we? Well, they get you in there. They load you up on liquor while you're playing for free, which helps. They give you food comps sometimes like, Hey, sir, would you like to buffet tickets here? And would I they, they won't show you. They won't show you any clocks. You won't find any big clocks or windows and casinos to this day. They, the whole thing is designed to, to basically, I guess, simulate eternal twilight early evening. Yeah. The nights just the lights are dim. So young. And that is the weird thing when you can't tell and people gamble it all hours. That's why I was surprised. Like you'll go down at four in the morning and you can't tell

a difference between that and noon. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. Little creepy. It is very creepy. They do not pump in oxygen. No, they don't. Apparently that would be extremely illegal, which makes sense to felony. It's basically drugging people. But the whole premise of that was that you basically gave people a rush or it kept them awake. Yeah. So they would stay and not get tired. Yeah. Contrary to that, like you said, people will often be comped food, drinks, rooms, kind of drunk. You might spend a little more. But yes, if you are, if you are lucky enough to be comped to room and you're a slot person, you're probably a member of the slot club, which you need to join when you, when you check in, it usually doesn't cost anything. But basically, you have a car

that tracks your play. Sure. And you don't want to be bashful about this. You don't want them to notice you. You want to, if you, if you're looking to get comped, you go ahead and let them know you're, you're here to play. Yeah. And if you want to get comped and you're not a slot person, you can just ask if you have a lot of money you want to spend and you're like, this is what I'm going to start doing this. You tell them, you go to someone and say, Hey, I need to get my play rated. Uh, and they will basically just put you on a list and say, okay, we'll start tracking and seeing what kind of money you're losing. Right. Uh, but as the Grabster points out, it is a sucker bet to spend more than you normally would or to stay longer just to get comped. That's

because you're going to spend more money in losses than you would just having gotten the room or gotten the buffet. Yeah. And Vegas is still cheaper maybe than some places, but it's not like the old days where it was like a hotel room is 20 bucks and the buffet is $5.95. It's a a vacation destination now. They get you with the room charges now too. Or the shows. The shows. Awesome. The kids, uh, they got stuff for the whole family now to keep everyone busy while mom and dad are giving away their money, their college fund. Right. So Chuck, um, security's kind of an issue, right? Yeah. There's the ubiquitous eye in the sky, which apparently they don't necessarily have over the slot areas. Yeah. Every other table's got a camera watching it.

And the whole, the whole process of, um, security is ground up, right? The front, the first defense in, um, I guess against cheating or fraud or theft is the dealer, him or herself. Yeah. Because they're really paying attention to the game and they're going to see clear as day if you're palming cards or, um, counting cards, whatever you're doing, they're trained to look out for that stuff. Right. And they know this game is literally their job to play this game every day for hours on end. Um, so they know if something's weird about it, right? Yeah. And then above them, you got table managers and pit bosses watching out over an area. Right. And they're not just watching customers. They're watching the dealers and the managers or everybody's watching everybody

else. Yeah. That was a great part because, you know, they break down the security. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I had a moment there. God, when, uh, he busts the country bumpkin who's not, who's got taken on the slots and that his country bumpkin, uh, uncle tried to get him like reinstated and then he was like, I can't do it. Yeah. So you sure you want to think about this? And he has that great line. He's like, what you people don't ever realize is that you're all just guests here. Yeah. And he's right because he eventually left the guy who got taken on the slots. His name was, he used to host like a B movie. Yeah. Yeah. Like Billy Bob something. Yeah. He was awesome. Yeah. I can't remember. He was great though. Uh, he was a pretty

funny dude. Um, I don't know what happened to him. He's around them. Sure. Okay. Um, and then above that you have security who are monitoring everything on TV. Right. Lots and lots of TVs. Lots and lots of cameras and they can train each one to look at whatever they want. I like it's not just the tables, all the ins and outs, the exits, the bathroom, not in the bathrooms, but these are all heavily policed by cameras. And, uh, I don't know. I could see them monitoring the bathrooms. I could see that too. Actually. Yeah. And in oceans 11, if you remember, one of the little tricks they used to get the cameras out of the way was KC Affleck and, and, uh, James Kahn's kid. What's his name? James Kahn's kid. They got in the argument and, and he

let go of the balloons and the balloons covered the camera long enough to get whatever they needed to get done done. Yeah. That was a great movie too. The first one was really good, I think. And not the original. I mean the first Soderbergh. Right. Okay. The original was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I can watch that like all day, every day. True. I like, I like the, the redo as well though. Okay. Okay. I thought it was glib. Oh, really? Yeah. Matt was glib. I thought the whole thing was glib. Um, so Chuck, if you're a chump like me and you walk around casinos with like your, your, your money in your hands, right? Just kind of smiling at people like, where do I put this? Yeah. Uh, how do you stay on security's good side? Well, you're the casino expert. Here's

a few tips. You don't want to touch any of the gaming equipment. Like don't grab the roulette wheel and say, this feels neato. Don't, uh, they say not to use two hands to do anything. Right. Like always kind of keep one hand off, off the, the stuff. And it doesn't hurt to keep the other hand in sight, the hand you're not using insight on the table. Yeah. Don't go up to a craps table with like one hand in your pocket and then like lower the dice below the table and then blow on them and then throw them. And also don't ever, ever tickle the dealer. They don't like that. Yes. You're not supposed to, you can't hand your money to a dealer. Always let your money on the table and don't expect them to cash anything out. They'll give you chips, but when you want your

chips to turn back into money, the dealer's not going to help you, which we should mention. The reason they use chips is A, to keep track of things easier and B, because you feel a lot better losing a hundred dollar chips, the chip than you do a hundred dollar bill. Yeah. It's, it's just like a debit card. That's right. Like I, there's so many things that you'd normally just wouldn't buy if you had to shell out cash for it. Yeah. But you totally get, because it's debit card. Yeah. You can watch people play, but just watch. Don't go up to people at the table and start talking to them. Don't tickle other players. Don't tickle players. Don't touch your chips. If you place the bet, it's final. Once you put it down, don't reach across the table and knock

over everyone else's chips. Ask for some help. Yeah. And don't like put your drink on the table. Although I've done that. People do that. They say not to do that, but I've done that. I don't think it's the end of the world. Agreed. Especially blackjack. There's no other place to put it, usually. There might be like a little thing right here hanging off the table. A lot of times, just what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Exactly. So Chuck, we talked about riverboat gambling in Native American casinos. Yes. And both of those are fairly recent in origin, really about the early 1990s, late 80s, right? Yeah. So Native American casinos, their existence can be traced back to one guy. He was the head of the the Cabazon tribe. Yeah. From California.

And his name is Arthur James Wellmes. And basically he figured out a loophole in the way that Native American territory is treated. It is technically sovereign ground, right? Yes. But criminal law extends into the sovereign area. So if you murder somebody that you committed a crime and the federal government has jurisdiction to investigate that crime. But if something is legal in that state where that territory is, then by extension, there's no crime that can possibly be committed if that is carried out within the Native American territory. It becomes a matter of civil law. Civil law doesn't extend in the Native American territory, right? Yeah. So basically they said, hey, if you can allow gambling in California and our reservations in California. Even if it's just

a lottery. Yeah. Then we can do that here however we want. Because it's a civil matter. Exactly. And as an aside related to that, if you fall and break your leg at a Native American casino, you're not going to be able to sue anybody. No redress for that. No redress. And Riverboats Josh, how that usually works is you go on a cruise, quote unquote, two hour cruise. But it's not so much a cruise because you don't go anywhere. The boat just stays there. And that's just your allotted time. Two hours. And it is specific. And you can't just say, can I stay a little longer? No, they're probably like, no, but you can leave and then come back. Yeah. And a lot of times they'll have a loss limit to they'll be like, you can't lose over $500. Right. But apparently, much the

same way with the government in Venice, state legislatures have been like, well, you know, we really come to depend on this riverboat gambling tax money. So you know what, go crazy. Right. Go nuts. Stay on as long as you want. Lose as much as you like. We are rolling in it because of you. So Chuck, I guess if a casino comes to your town, anybody who's ever seen that Simpsons episode knows that it's a boon for the community, right? Big business, dude. Everyone's happy. Everyone's making tons of money. Everybody's got jobs. It's money for free. Yeah, exactly. Not true. No. So studies show that there's actually a negative economic impact on a local community by a casino. And it's pretty simple. Why most casinos play is carried out by

locals who come into the casino and lose their money, not necessarily by tourists who wouldn't have come there otherwise and are having an economic impact that definitely accounts for a substantial portion. But when you take it all into account, the local economy actually loses money when a casino comes to town. That's right, Josh. At least several studies have shown that. Yeah. And we'll get into gambling maybe on a different show, but we should point out that the dark side of casinos is about 25% of their profits are generated from the 5% of addicted gamblers. Yes. So 25% of their profits are coming from people who have gambling problems. Right. And probably most of those people live like down the street. Yeah, maybe work at casinos.

Yeah. We should do one on gambling. There's so much more there. I don't want to breeze over that. Okay. So that's it for casinos though. If you want to know how Craps works, we have a how Craps works article. Yeah. We have articles on most of the games that we talked about in here. You can type any of those up or you can find links to them within the casino article. You can just type casino, C-A-S-I-N-O. Yeah. Which means social club. It's a casino. In the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com, which means it's time for a listener mail. What? What happened to you? Yeah. We got a little plug for audio book. We got to insert here. Yes. We have two audio books now. Yeah. But the most recent one is the one that we're plugging.

Yes. Okay. So go ahead. It is the super stuff guide to happiness and it features us and Josh's niece and interview subjects and different music and sound design and it's about an hour and 17 minutes. Yeah. And just nothing but goodness. Agreed. Even though it won't necessarily make you happy. Right. Well, how are people going to buy this? Go to iTunes and buy it for $3.99 in the U.S. and it could be a little more if you're in Australia. Sorry. I'm told. But they said I actually told them I owed them $3 and they said, we're going to take you up on it. Yeah. I saw that. You need to be careful saying things like that. I know. So yeah, help support us. Buy it on iTunes. It makes us look good. We don't get any of it. No, that's true. But it does make us look good.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And it makes us feel good too. That's true. Yeah. So now it's time for Listener Mail. Josh, this one I'm going to call kind of gross, but funny. Just listened to, can you sweat colors, guys? It brought to mind a hearing question that my friends and I have been grappling with for years. Sit down and prepare yourself for this. Okay. Are you ready? Yes. Would you rather sweat ranch dressing or always smell like Chinese food? And here are the clarifications. You would only sweat the ranch dressing in times that would normally cause you to sweat. The ranch dressing is consumable. The Chinese food smell is the general smell of a small Chinese food takeout joint. No amount of washing will make you not smell like Chinese food,

nor will perfumes and colognes abolish the smell. They will simply compliment it. Let me know, guys. P.S., follow me on Twitter. It would make me feel special that it's clay CLAY, capital GN on Twitter. AKA Clay Aiken. This is his name is Clayton N. So Clayton, my answer is I would rather smell like Chinese food because I'm such a heavy sweater. The ranch thing would just be infinitely more embarrassing. I wish you'd sweat ranch. And you could always explain away the Chinese food saying, God, sorry, man, I just went and had Chinese food, but I can't explain ranch sweat. No, neither can medical science. My answer is neither. Although my friend Eddie loves ranch dressing so much, he might elect for that. He would just

sweat over his pizza. Nice. If you have a question for us unanswerable or otherwise, and you want to tweet it to us, we're always on Twitter. It's SYSK podcast. Tweet to that. You can go like us on Facebook. Stuff you should know. That's facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can always send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Works staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Yeah. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Boreen. I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting ground breaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson and so many more.

New episodes around every Tuesday. Many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.