The only casino games one can win at, in the long run, are blackjack, via counting cards, and poker, if you're good at it, which is why that's all I play in a casino, lol. All the table games have a built in mathematical advantage for the house, as I think almost everyone knows. But blackjack odds can be slightly turned in one's favor by counting cards. The system from the book/film "21" is simple and works - but without a partner, you can't do more than win a bit more than you lose, because when the deck is "hot" (rich in remaining face cards/aces), you need a 2nd person to come along and make huge bets to profit - if you change your betting a lot, on your own, mid-deck, they'll know you're counting and ask you to leave (or worse, lol).
Poker can be quite profitable, if you know the game well (the math and at least something about pattern recognition/psychology) and also know your limitations. It's not that hard to consistently beat the "rake" (the amount the house takes per hand), since there are, fortunately, a lot of bad poker players. I play about once a month, mostly at PARX (way close than AC for me), and I probably win (more than the rake) about 2/3 of the time, which translates into winning about a couple of thousand a year. Part of that is knowing my limitations: I'm comfortable playing up to $10-$20 table stakes games (hold-em or Omaha) or no-limit hold-em up to maybe $2-$5 levels, since the players aren't usually as good at the low/mid-stakes games and I won't usually get hurt too badly if I have a tough night.
At any decent sized poker room, for most of these games, there are enough tables playing the same game that it's much harder for a group to collude together, since people are assigned to tables in order of arrival - I've also rarely seen a table that doesn't turn over significantly during any appreciable time (like 3-4 hours or more). However, I've heard/read plenty of stories of the kind of collusion you mentioned at higher stakes games, where there may only be 1 table playing at those stakes, making it a lot easier for a team to collude together - another reason I don't play real high stakes.
At least the games aren't fixed in the casino, like they used to be on-line, where it was simple to cheat, by playing two players in one game from different IP addresses or by having two players at one table simply be on the phone and colluding. I'm certain this happened to me on line many years ago, right before on-line poker was banned in the US. I had been playing a lot of on-line poker (several hours per day) and was up about $9000. I cashed out about $2000, since I wanted to ensure some profit and then one night, I went a little nuts, going up in stakes from my usual $10-20 games to $40-$80 Omaha hi/lo and I proceeded to lose my remaining $7000 in about 3 hours. It was like a slow-motion train wreck that I simply couldn't stop. I kept getting pinched between guys who I'm sure were colluding, betting pots up to make bigger wins, plus I even think that game might've been rigged, since I twice lost monster full houses to quads and that just doesn't happen twice in 3 hours (a year later reports came out of fixed games). I quit playing on line after that and then the banning made that moot.
