USA Casinos
Las Vegas and Atlantic City New Jersey are no longer the only games in town for USA casinos. In fact, according to the American Gaming Association, there are 917 full-fledged casinos in the US, and if you broaden the term to include very small gambling halls, the number shoots up to 2,157, the largest amount of gambling venues in the world. In terms of casinos, thanks to laws that allow American Indian Tribes, thanks to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, and at present, there are nearly 525 American Indian Casinos, compared to. The majority of casinos are in Nevada, Oklahoma, California and Colorado, but this includes both Indian and private casinos. In the US, only 8 states do not have at least one casino:
Hawaii
Utah
Kentucky
Georgia
South Carolina
New Hampshire
Vigrinia
Vermont
Ten states have racinos, where gamblers go to a racetrack to not only bet on the horses, but play slot machines, and now, play regular table games such as blackjack, poker and roulette. Meanwhile, dozens of cruise ships operate casinos from US ports. With the exception of Disney Cruises and Norweigan cruise lines, the vast majority of cruises that operate in international waters have casinos of a decent size. Meanwhile, several thousand more annually in the states of Iowa, Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana, Indiana and Missouri board riverboat casinos to gamble on riverboats offering not only slots but table games.
Meanwhile, the biggest and the best of casinos are the casino resorts, which actually operate in a number of states, but get their reputation primarily from Casino Resorts in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. These are mega-resorts with thousands of rooms, entertainment, shopping centers and the like to add to thousands of feet of gambling space. The Wynn/Encore is currently the largest casino in the US with close to 200,000 square feet of gambling entertainment, followed by MGM Grand and the Bellagio.
In actuality, the Chickasaw Nation operates the WinStar Casino in Thackerville Oklahoma, with a population of 535 or so, which is actually the world's largest casino in the world offering a massive 600,000 square feet, over three times the size of Wynn/Encore. Second on the list of large casinos in the US is the Foxwoods Casino, another tribal casino in Mashantucket, CT, with over 344,000 square feet of gambling terrain. The Foxwoods casino, by the way, is probably the most profitable Indian Casino in the US, as it draws a clientele from many large cities on the East Coast.
Then there are card rooms and mini-casinos. Believe it or not, Montana has a staggering 200 plus legal cardrooms thanks to Indian tribes. Second is California, which has legalized card rooms since 1984, long before it began to recognize casinos. People love to play poker, as well as other Asian card games such as Pai Gow. Finally, there is online gambling. Currently, only 7 states allow online gambling from within their state, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, but many foresee that California, New York, Illinois, Indiana, and Massachusetts are not far behind.
Online gambling has popped up throughout the world, and though most states put up a front that says you must be within the actual state in order to gamble the huge question is how does the casino or the state know. If you are in, say North Dakota, and you gamble at a Deleware online gambling site, how do they know whether you traveled by plane or car to Delaware? The answer is that they can't. Very much like marijuana, in the foreseeable future, gambling in some form will be pretty much allowed everywhere, with the possible exception of Utah, which is conservatively affected by the whim of the Morman majority.