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A croupier is the person who takes and pays out bets at a gambling table, often in a casino. The croupier is standing in for the house but usually has no personal stake in the game. Games that commonly use croupiers are blackjack, roulette, baccarat and craps.
The word may also be used to refer to the person who sits as assistant chairman at the lower end of the table at a dinner party.
The modern usage derives from Old French, where it referred to the hindmost person of two riding the same horse. The word croup referred to the rump of a quadruped; a person who rides behind another person on a horse is seated on the animal's rump, hence the name.
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