I was watching some poker videos on Youtube, and noticed one small “card room”, featuring a number of Hold’em players playing for high stakes. They came to the table with as much as $50k in chips.
At the end of the game, a camera (as a selfie) focuses on one of the player at the cash cage, who has just cashed out for $137k. He takes the piles of 100s, puts them in his backpack, and leaves.
My question is - how does a small card room like this handle security? It seems anyone (probably armed) could walk in (after getting past front-door security, which I assume would be there), and leave (illegally) with a large sum of money. It didn’t look like the cage had more security than (probably bulletproof) glass, and a couple of cashiers. Not nearly as secure as the much larger Vegas casinos.
Somebody armed not getting pass security, they all make you walk through a metal detector. Cameras provide the first level of security inside the gaming area and any suspected criminal behavior is dealt with swiftly and discreetly.
The winner is going to be escorted out to a waiting vehicle that is likley provided by the event. The event will most likley provide additional security that they don’t show on camera, because it would make no sense to show it.
Still it possible to get robbed at some point, but not in the casino area. Most likely to get robbed once he starts spending his winnings like a drunken sailor on leave.
Or, like much of this sort of thing on line, it’s all performance and the guy puts the money back off-camera for a more secure payout.
Performance sounds about right, because why would you cash out your winnings of $137,000 in piles of hundred-dollar bills (which is awkward at best) and not, say, a check or direct deposit?
I’ve been in a lot of casinos in the US, ranging from small card rooms, tribal casinos, and large Vegas type facilities. I’ve also been in casinos in London, Venice, Germany, and Budapest. I’ve never seen one with a metal detector.
They might be hidden, but security in the big casinos is on the ball. I once walked into a Vegas casino that had a “no guns” policy with a large gun case (that was full of swords). I didn’t even make it halfway across the lobby before security converged on me from three different directions all at once.
The swords confused the hell out of them. 
Don’t tease us like that!
As I told the US customs guy who asked why I was taking a box of swords to Vegas, “I was having a very complicated vacation”.
I agree. It feels likely that the “payout with big stacks of cash” is staged for the camera.
So in Vegas, if you win bigly, do they cut you a check? What if you win, like, $4k or something else comparatively small (I know that there are guys upstairs betting ten times that much per hand). Can you ask for a check? Is there a solid number above which they pay with a check, and below which they pay in cash?