House Edge Explained: Every Casino Game Ranked by How Badly It Beats You

The house edge is the casino's average cut of every bet you make, expressed as a percentage of that bet. Bet $10 on red at an American roulette wheel and the edge is 5.26%, which means the wheel charges you about 53 cents per spin on average, whether you win that spin or not (Wizard of Odds). It's not a prediction about tonight. It's a price tag. And once you can read the price tags, the casino floor turns into a menu: a few things on it are nearly free, most are fairly priced entertainment, and a handful are daylight robbery with a light show.

This page is the menu. Every common game and bet, ranked from cheapest to most expensive, with the math shown so you can check it, and a link to our deeper guide for each table. It's the price list behind the MoneySexNerd Guide to Gambling.

How the house builds its edge

Casinos don't cheat, and they don't need to. They just pay winning bets slightly less than the true odds. Roulette is the cleanest example. An American wheel has 38 pockets: 1 through 36, plus 0 and 00. A single-number bet pays 35 to 1. If the casino paid fair odds, it would pay 37 to 1, because you're covering one pocket out of 38. That missing two units, spread across all 38 outcomes, is 2/38, or 5.26% (Wizard of Odds). Every standard bet on that wheel carries the same 5.26%, except one: the five-number bet on 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3, which pays 6 to 1 and costs 7.89% (Wizard of Odds).

Michael Shackleford, the former actuary behind the Wizard of Odds (Las Vegas Sun), defines house edge as "the ratio of the average loss to the initial bet," and his figures assume you play with optimal or near-optimal strategy (Wizard of Odds). Hold on to that assumption. It matters later.

The other half of the formula is speed. A small edge applied to a lot of decisions adds up, which is why your real cost is edge × bet size × decisions per hour. We walk through that idea slowly in The House Always Wins (And That's Fine). Here, we'll just use it.

Every casino bet, ranked

All figures below come from Shackleford's comparison table unless noted, and assume correct strategy where strategy exists (Wizard of Odds). Lower is better for you.

The sports-betting figure comes from Shackleford's sports page: at standard odds you risk $11 to win $10, for an edge of 4.54% (Wizard of Odds). The slot range is based on the returns available from one major manufacturer (Wizard of Odds), so treat it as a typical band, not a law of nature.

The nearly free tier: under 1%

Three things on the floor cost almost nothing if you play them right.

The craps odds bet is the only bet in a casino with no edge at all. After a point is set, you can stack extra money behind your pass line bet, and the casino pays it at true odds (Wizard of Odds). The catch is that you can only make it after a 1.41% pass line bet, so it's a discount, not a free lunch. The more odds a table allows, the lower your blended price. Our craps guide shows how to ignore the 80% of the table that's bad for you.

Blackjack with basic strategy gets down to 0.28% under liberal Vegas Strip rules: dealer stands on soft 17, double on any two cards, double after splitting, resplit aces, late surrender (Wizard of Odds). Rules matter enormously here. The cheapest way to wreck a good blackjack game is a sign that says "Blackjack pays 6 to 5." Shackleford calculates that the 6-to-5 payout, all other rules equal, adds about 1.4 percentage points to the edge (Las Vegas Sun; Wizard of Odds). That turns one of the best games in the building into a mediocre one. More in our blackjack guide.

Full-pay video poker is the sleeper. A 9/6 Jacks or Better machine returns 99.54% with optimal strategy, or 0.46% to the house (Wizard of Odds). Full-pay Deuces Wild, played perfectly, returns 100.76%, which is a game the player can beat on paper (Wizard of Odds). On paper is doing heavy lifting in that sentence: you need the right pay table, the strategy memorized, and the patience of a monk. Our video poker guide shows how to read the pay table before you sit.

The cheap seats: about 1% to 3%

This is where most smart casual play lives.

Baccarat Banker costs 1.06%, even after the casino's commission on winning Banker bets, and Player costs 1.24% (Wizard of Odds). That's the whole strategy. The game with the tuxedos and the velvet ropes asks you to make one decision, and the right answer is always the same. Why it still feels glamorous is in our baccarat guide.

Craps pass and don't pass sit at 1.41% and 1.36%. Place bets on 6 or 8 are close behind at 1.52% (Wizard of Odds). Notice the trap built into the same table: place 4 or 10 costs 6.67%, more than four times as much, for a bet that looks almost identical.

Single-zero roulette costs 2.70%, about half the American wheel's price for the same spinning ball. On a French table with the La Partage rule, you get half of an even-money bet back when the ball lands on zero, which cuts that bet's edge in half again, to 1.35% (Wizard of Odds). In roulette the only strategy that matters is which wheel you sit at. Our roulette guide calls the game a beautiful tax, and that's a compliment, sort of.

The mid-priced floor: about 3% to 6%

Carnival games like Three Card Poker (3.37% for ante and play) and Let It Ride (3.51%) live here, along with Caribbean Stud at 5.22% (Wizard of Odds). So does the standard sportsbook bet at 4.54%, and so does the double-zero roulette wheel at 5.26%. None of these are scandalous. They're just priced like a nice dinner instead of a cheap one.

The American wheel is the useful lesson. Same ball, same dealer, same felt as the European wheel, and almost double the cost, because of one extra green pocket. If a casino offers both, the choice is free money left on the table.

The expensive stuff: slots, side bets and the wheel

Slots are the hardest to price because you can't see the math. Nevada's rule is that every gaming device must theoretically pay back at least 75% of what's wagered on it (Nevada Gaming Control Board, Regulation 14.040). That's a floor of a 25% edge, and real machines usually do far better than that. The best public window is what casinos actually keep. In 2025, Nevada's slots held 7.14% of the money played through them statewide and 7.85% on the Las Vegas Strip, up from 5.72% statewide in 2004 (UNLV Center for Gaming Research). In other words, the machines have quietly gotten more expensive over two decades. Why people keep feeding them anyway is a behavioral economics story, told in our slots guide.

The Big Six wheel, the giant upright money wheel, runs from 11.11% on the $1 spot to 24.07% on the joker or logo spot (Wizard of Odds).

The proposition bets in the middle of the craps table are the casino's luxury goods. Hard 6 or 8 costs 9.09%, any craps 11.11%, and any seven 16.67% (Wizard of Odds).

The baccarat Tie bet pays 8 to 1 and costs 14.36% (Wizard of Odds). It sits next to one of the cheapest bets in the building, and that's the point. The cheap bet gets you to the table. The expensive one is the upsell.

The worst bet in the building: keno

Keno carries an edge of 25% to 29% in Shackleford's table (Wizard of Odds). When he surveyed every live keno game in Las Vegas in 2001, returns ran from 65% to 80%, meaning an edge of 20% to 35% (Wizard of Odds). Keno is basically a lottery with casino furniture. If you love it, love it at the minimum.

What it actually costs per hour

Percentages are abstract. Dollars per hour are not. Shackleford publishes a hands-per-hour table that he says came from an executive at a major Strip casino and is used to rate players (Wizard of Odds). Multiply those speeds by a $10 bet and the optimal-strategy edges above, and you get a rough price of admission:

• Blackjack (70 hands an hour, 0.28%): about $1.96 an hour. At a 6-to-5 table, with roughly 1.4 points added, it's closer to $12.
• Craps pass line (48 decisions an hour, 1.41%): about $6.77 an hour, before any free odds.
• Baccarat Banker (72 hands an hour, 1.06%): about $7.63 an hour.
• Single-zero roulette (35 spins an hour, 2.70%): about $9.45 an hour.
• Big Six (10 spins an hour, $1 spot at 11.11%): about $11.11 an hour.
• Casino War (65 hands an hour, 2.88%): about $18.72 an hour.
• Double-zero roulette (38 spins an hour, 5.26%): about $20 an hour.

Two things jump out. First, speed is a hidden multiplier: Casino War has a modest edge, but it's fast enough to cost about 70% more per hour than the Big Six at the same bet. Second, the gap between the cheapest and priciest common table games is about ten times. Same $10 chip, same evening, very different bill.

The honest complications

The edge assumes you play perfectly. You won't. The same casino rating table that gives the speeds above uses higher edges than the optimal-strategy figures, because it reflects real players' mistakes and typical bets. It rates blackjack at 0.75% and craps at 1.58% (Wizard of Odds). The gap between 0.28% and 0.75% is the price of playing on feel.

House edge isn't the only way to measure a game. In games where you can raise your bet mid-hand, the edge is measured against your opening bet only. Caribbean Stud has a 5.22% edge, close to American roulette, but its loss as a share of all money actually wagered, which Shackleford calls the element of risk, is only 2.56% (Wizard of Odds). Shackleford argues that second number is the better one for comparing games.

House edge isn't hold. Hold is the share of chips a table keeps compared with the chips it sold. If a table sells $1,000 in chips and players walk away with $700, the hold is 30% (Wizard of Odds). That number depends on how long people sit and how many times the same money goes around, so it can be many times the edge. Shackleford notes that even casino staff confuse the two.

The edge is the long run. You live in the short run. Any single night can land anywhere, which is how people convince themselves they have a system. They don't. They have variance and a story. The wheel doesn't remember the last spin either, which is the whole lesson of the gambler's fallacy.

Poker is a different animal. The house doesn't play. It takes a rake and lets you fight the other players, so your edge depends on being better than the table. That gets its own guide: why poker is the one casino game you can actually beat.

The house's other edge: comps

The casino also uses the house edge to decide how much to give back. Your comps are based on your theoretical loss: average bet × decisions per hour × hours played × the edge the casino assigns your game. That rating table is exactly the kind of tool casinos use to do it (Wizard of Odds). Because the casino rates players at the sloppier, average-player edge, a disciplined player who actually plays at 0.28% gets rated as if they were losing more. That gap is the one edge in the building you can sometimes flip in your favor. The full playbook is in comps, players cards and casino loyalty programs.

Rules for the table

• Choose the game before the bet. Moving from the American wheel to a European one saves more than any betting system ever will.
• Read the felt. "Blackjack pays 3 to 2" is the good sign. "6 to 5" means walk.
• Bet Banker in baccarat, pass or don't pass in craps, and take the odds.
• Skip the center of the craps table, the Tie bet, the Big Six and keno, unless you're deliberately paying for the fun.
• Price your night in dollars per hour, decide what the entertainment is worth, and bring exactly that.
• Always use your players card. You're paying for the comps either way.

The house edge isn't a scam. It's the casino's honest business model, and our money hub argues it's the one you should be stealing for regular life: small edge, lots of repetitions, never bet the building. Inside the casino, you can't have the edge. But you can stop paying full price for it. For more deep dives like this, browse the MoneySexNerd series index, and if you'd rather spend tonight's roulette budget on something that lasts, the MoneySexNerd shop is open.

Sources

1. Shackleford, M. "House Edge of Casino Games Explained (Full Comparison Table)." Wizard of Odds, updated August 3, 2026. wizardofodds.com
2. Shackleford, M. "Roulette Basics: Rules, Bets, and Game Variations Explained." Wizard of Odds. wizardofodds.com
3. Shackleford, M. "Blackjack: House Edge and Rule Sets." Ask the Wizard, Wizard of Odds. wizardofodds.com
4. "Statistician's tips on increasing your odds at blackjack in Las Vegas." Las Vegas Sun, May 5, 2017. lasvegassun.com
5. Shackleford, M. "Jacks or Better" (video poker return tables). Wizard of Odds. wizardofodds.com
6. Shackleford, M. "Sports Betting." Wizard of Odds. wizardofodds.com
7. Shackleford, M. "Keno." Wizard of Odds. wizardofodds.com
8. Nevada Gaming Control Board. Regulation 14, section 14.040, "Minimum standards for gaming devices." gaming.nv.gov
9. UNLV Center for Gaming Research. "Nevada Slot Hold: Annual and Monthly Hold Percentages, 2004-2026." March 2026. library.unlv.edu