Say a guy decided to just for the fuck of it , start his own gambling den in his basement, in the privacy of his own home. He could simply call it "Card Night" and have a weekly game night with his "Buddies".

How would the feds or LE even know if he was running an illegal casino?

This is a serious question. I mean if its just a "Card game" then how is it against the law no matter how much people are playing for? Plenty of people have card games all the time at their house.

My cousin got caught doing this down in Montgomery Alabama back in the 90's. He spent a good bit of time away for it too Granted he had prior charges for gambling and bootlegging that may have affected his sentence.

It would take a while to get caught depending on how many people you got coming in and how much is being dropped nightly or however long you're holding games. The more money and people that shows up the higher your risk becomes because of sour ass people mad because they lost this or that.

Loose lips, sink ships. It’s a tale as old as time.

I think a person who loses a lot of money may be angry and call the police on the place out of spite.

If it's a "quarter/half game", where players bring a 6-pack or some cheap booze,and they order a couple pizzas,nobody cares.
If you're running a $5,000 buy-in and raking the pot,you might attract some LE attention if it's been running for a while,but 99% of the time it's either from a loudmouth or a snitch.
The smart move is to take care of your buddy,the cop.
If you aren't connected to at least one or two cops,you have no business being in the gambling trade.
If you live in an area that still has connected guys,you can go that route, but you're going to kick up a ridiculous amount of money.

Big difference between a card game and casino. Card games come in a wide variety. In Alabama it is illegal to gamble with a few exception, such as bingo, casinos own by the the Creek tribe, and the old dog track in Birmingham. Small games like a few friends play poker once or every other week and not much money at stake, no one care unless it is a ambitious prosecutor making a name for themselves to further their career. They go after the 30 or so people who show up once a week and drop thousands of dollars to the house and LE notice the vehicles, small crowd, or complaints of noise or traffic by the neighbors. In most cases it is word of mouth, or a sore loser. Hotel rooms are another location and invite only, for a few years I have been to them every couple of months years ago, 5000 to 50000 to get a seat and someone had to vouch for you, but those games were smart and knew how to grease palms, knew officers on patrol, manager the works so they never had problems.

Dix, your cousin didn't happened to live in Highland did he?

First off, the guy would need to find a "den" and then buy the den. Dens are hard to find. Unlike lions den's, they aren't free.

So basically the smartest way to go about it would be this if you had a good enough relationship with someone who was connected........

"I'm interested in running a "game night" and need protection. I'll kick up (Enter $$$ amount here) to you so its left alone by law enforcement and people who may try to rob it eventually or fuck me over. Can you help me out with that?"