When you walk into a casino, the dazzling lights and sultry music create a euphoric environment that is hard to step away from. The sounds and visual design are carefully crafted to lead you to spend more money. There are many different ways casinos lure you in, including using the sunk cost fallacy to make you keep betting after losing. They also encourage heavy drinking and provide free booze, which lowers inhibitions and clouds your judgment.
Casinos also know how to manipulate the air you breathe by wafting scented oils through their ventilation systems to make you feel even more euphoric as you play. This can be especially effective in slots, where the scent of a near-miss keeps players playing. You can even buy the scented oil to take home.
Another trick casinos use is to avoid showing you the time of day or night. They want you to lose track of how much time you’ve spent gambling and to forget about your basic human needs like food and sleep. They can even offer free meals or hotel stays to get you to stay longer.
But underneath all the flashing lights and free cocktails, casinos are built on a bedrock of math, designed to slowly bleed their patrons of cash. Despite this, for years mathematically inclined people have tried to turn the tables and find flaws in their rigged system. They have been successful at times, but the house edge and variance of each game remain unaltered.