Lottery is a form of gambling in which numbers are drawn to determine prize amounts. It has long been a popular way to raise money for public works projects, townships and colleges. Its origins date back to ancient times. The drawing of lots to determine ownership or other rights is recorded in the Bible, and its use for material gain began to grow in popularity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By the 17th century, colonial-era America had several state-sponsored lotteries. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin sponsored a lottery to finance cannons for defense of Philadelphia and Thomas Jefferson sponsored a private lottery to relieve his crushing debts.

In the 1970s, new innovations dramatically transformed the lottery industry. The most significant change was the introduction of games that do not require a waiting period between the purchase of a ticket and the drawing of a winning number. These “instant” games have higher prize amounts but lower odds of winning than passive drawing games. Many of these games are staged in partnership with brand-name companies and feature sports teams, celebrities and cartoon characters as prizes.

Because state lotteries operate as businesses, with a focus on maximizing revenues, their advertising necessarily focuses on persuading consumers to spend their money. As a result, lottery advertising may sometimes be at cross-purposes with the general public interest. In addition, state governments that operate lotteries are dependent on their revenues in an era of anti-tax sentiment. This dependency creates a temptation to increase the size of jackpots and thus attract more people.

A casino, also known as a gambling house or a gaming hall, is an establishment for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often combined with hotels, restaurants and shopping centers or are standalone attractions.

The casino industry was once dominated by organized crime, with mob money flowing into Reno and Las Vegas. Eventually, legitimate businessmen realized the potential of casinos and began buying up property and opening them. Real estate developers and hotel chains like Donald Trump and the Hilton organization soon had more money than the gangsters, and were able to buy out the mafia’s interest in casinos. Federal crackdowns and the possibility of losing a license at even the slightest hint of mob involvement keep the mafia out of casinos today.

Gambling in one form or another has been part of human culture for millennia. Evidence of dice games shows up in China around 2300 BC, and playing cards became popular in Europe in the 1400s. Baccarat is the principal card game in many European casinos, and blackjack is a fixture in American ones. A few casinos offer poker variants such as Caribbean stud, but most do not accept bets on individual players, instead making their profits by taking a cut of each pot or charging an hourly fee to play.

Modern casinos make heavy use of technology for security purposes. For example, in “chip tracking,” betting chips have built-in microcircuitry that allows casinos to oversee the exact amounts of each wager minute by minute, and to be alerted to any statistical deviations. Elaborate surveillance systems provide a high-tech eye-in-the-sky, with cameras that can be adjusted to focus on suspicious patrons.