Modern casino floors are covered comprehensively by cameras, with dedicated coverage of every table, cage window and count room. Recordings are retained for a period set by the regulator.
The surveillance department is separate from the floor and often reports independently, because a large part of its job is watching staff rather than players. Dealer error and internal theft account for more losses than player advantage play.
For an ordinary player it is mostly protection: a disputed payout can be settled by reviewing the tape, and it usually is.
One practical consequence: if you believe a payout was wrong, say so immediately and at the table. Surveillance can resolve almost any dispute from the recording, but the request has to reach them while the footage is easy to locate and before the chips have moved. Raising it an hour later at the cage makes a straightforward check into a difficult one.
Related terms in casino floor
- Commission — A percentage charged on winning bets that would otherwise favour the player.
- Push — A tie in which the bet neither wins nor loses and the stake is returned.
- Natural — A hand that wins immediately on the first cards dealt.
- Shoe — The box holding several shuffled decks from which cards are dealt.
- Cut card — A coloured plastic card placed in the shoe to mark where dealing stops.
- Penetration — The proportion of a shoe dealt before the reshuffle.
Where an entry quotes a number, that figure comes from the computed sections of this site rather than from another glossary, so the definition and the derivation cannot drift apart. Each entry links to the page where the number is worked out.