The “eye in the sky” is an elaborate surveillance system that allows security personnel to watch the entire casino at once. The cameras in the ceiling watch every table, change window and doorway and they can be adjusted to focus on certain suspicious visitors by security workers in a separate room that is filled with banks of security monitors. The video is also recorded so that if a crime or a cheat is found after the fact, the casino security can review the tapes and pinpoint who the culprit was that committed the crime/cheat and it can be used as evidence against them if they needed to go to court.
Slot machine payouts are determined randomly by the computer chips inside the machines and thus no one watches the slot floor and controls the payouts. There is also a more subtle aspect to casino security and that is the routines and patterns of the casino games. The way the dealers shuffle the cards, the locations of the betting spots on the table and the expected reactions and motions of the players all follow certain patterns. Because of these patterns, when someone does something out of the ordinary it is a lot easier for the security personnel to spot it.
