Post template not applying on theme (potentially rendering as Page template)

Question

I have a Post template, when I select it in the Post options, it saves, but doesn't apply the template on the frontend. Any ideas why this is happening? The posts in question are in the default posts area.

Here is the start of my template file, which is interestingly titled as Casino Live Dealer Template Page Template in the theme editor. This insinuates to me that Wordpress is reading this as a page template.

<?php
/*
Template Name: Casino Live Dealer Template
Template Post Type: post
*/

Answer 1

Fixed it! I have now created a single folder in my theme's directory and put category specific templates in there. To enable this, I added this to the theme's function file

/*
* Define a constant path to our single template folder
*/
define(SINGLE_PATH, TEMPLATEPATH . '/single');
 
/**
* Filter the single_template with our custom function
*/
add_filter('single_template', 'my_single_template');
 
/**
* Single template function which will choose our template
*/
function my_single_template($single) {
global $wp_query, $post;
 
/**
* Checks for single template by category
* Check by category slug and ID
*/
foreach((array)get_the_category() as $cat) :
 
if(file_exists(SINGLE_PATH . '/single-cat-' . $cat->slug . '.php'))
return SINGLE_PATH . '/single-cat-' . $cat->slug . '.php';
 
elseif(file_exists(SINGLE_PATH . '/single-cat-' . $cat->term_id . '.php'))
return SINGLE_PATH . '/single-cat-' . $cat->term_id . '.php';
 
endforeach;
}

This was thanks to this article!