House Edge Explained: Every Casino Game Compared

The figures assume the common version of each game in Britain and correct play where the game has decisions. A blackjack table that pays 6:5 for a blackjack, or a baccarat table with a different commission, moves its row. The rows marked “our calculation” are worked out from the payouts on this page; the others come from published analyses of the stated rule set and match the figures we show on each game page.

Notice how wide the spread is within a single game. The Banker bet and the Tie are both baccarat, a few centimetres apart on the same layout, and one costs more than thirteen times as much as the other. Choosing the bet matters as much as choosing the game.

The edge comes from payouts that sit slightly below what fair odds would pay. A fair coin toss pays even money; a casino version that paid 0.95 to 1 would carry a 2.5% edge. Every table game works the same way, with the shortfall built into the payout table rather than into the chance of winning.

The edge is a percentage of the money staked, not of the money you bring. That distinction matters: a player who buys in for £100 and keeps re-staking their winnings may stake £1,000 or more in an evening. The expected cost is the edge on the total turnover, which is why games with fast rounds cost more per hour at the same edge.

For roulette the counting is simple, because every pocket is equally likely. For games such as baccarat and blackjack the counting covers millions of card combinations, so the figures are worked out by computer and published as analyses. The principle never changes: probabilities times payouts, summed.

One point trips people up. Some bets are only resolved part of the time, such as a craps place bet that can stay on the table for several rolls, or a bet that pushes. Analysts can quote the edge per bet made or per bet resolved; this site quotes it per bet made, which is the figure that matches your total stake.

Craps pass line. The pass line wins 244 of every 495 decisions and loses 251, counting every way the come-out and point rolls can go. Each win and loss is one unit, so the return is (244 − 251)/495 = −7/495, a house edge of 1.41%. Backing it with free odds at 3x, 4x and 5x, which pay true odds and carry no edge, spreads that 7/495 over a larger total stake: on average 3.78 units instead of 1, giving about 0.37% of everything staked.

Baccarat Banker. In an eight-deck shoe the Banker hand wins 45.86% of rounds, loses 44.62% and ties 9.52%. A winning Banker bet pays 0.95 to 1 after the 5% commission, so the return is 0.4586 × 0.95 − 0.4462 = −0.0105, or 1.06% once rounding is removed.^{2 (source)} The Player bet, paid at evens with no commission, returns 0.4462 − 0.4586 = −1.24%.

Baccarat Tie. The Tie wins 9.52% of rounds and pays 8 to 1; ties do not cost the stake on Player or Banker but the Tie bet loses whenever there is no tie. Its return is 0.0952 × 8 − 0.9048 = −0.1432, the 14.36% figure in the table once the exact probabilities are used.

The defaults are a bet on red in European roulette: 18 winning pockets, 19 losing ones, paying even money. Change the losing ways to 20 for the American wheel and the edge jumps to 5.26%. Try a craps any 7 bet with 6 ways to win, 30 to lose and a payout of 4 to 1, and you get 16.67%.

A negative result means the bet favours the player, which you will not find on a casino table for long. The free odds bet in craps returns exactly 0%, one of the very few bets in the casino that do. It can only be placed behind a pass or come bet that already carries an edge.

Slots and other machine games usually quote RTP, and table games usually quote house edge, but they describe the same thing. Licensed online games for players in Great Britain have to describe their rules and the likelihood of winning, which is where the RTP figure appears.^{5 (source)} Our page on how slot machines work explains what an RTP of 96% does and does not tell you.

Both figures are long-run averages across all players and all sessions. A 96% RTP does not mean you get £96 back from £100. It means the game pays out £96 of every £100 staked across a very large number of spins, and any one session can end far from that.

The blackjack figures are published effects against an eight-deck game where the dealer stands on soft 17;^{4 (source)} the roulette figures follow from the pocket counts (5.26% − 2.70% and 2.70% − 1.35%). Blackjack effects add up only roughly, because rules interact, but they show clearly which signs to look for. Our blackjack rules page sets out the common British table against a typical Las Vegas one.

Take 100 spins of £10 on red at a single-zero wheel. The average cost is £27, but each spin swings by £10 either way, so over 100 spins the spread is about £100 either side of that average. Roughly two sessions in three land somewhere between £73 up and £127 down. That spread is called variance, and it is why a low edge does not guarantee a winning night and a high edge does not guarantee a losing one.

What the edge does guarantee is the direction of travel. The more you stake in total, the closer your overall result gets to the edge times the turnover. On £1,000 of total stakes at 2.70%, the expected cost is £27. Our safer gambling page has the tools for capping that in advance.

Roulette, French roulette and the three craps rows are exact: we counted every winning and losing outcome (37 or 38 pockets, 36 dice combinations, the 495 pass-line decisions) and applied the payouts printed on each game page. Blackjack, baccarat and Three Card Poker involve too many card combinations to count by hand, so we use the published figures for the stated rules and show the payout arithmetic that leads to them. Slots publish their own RTP per game. The table answers one question, which bet costs least for the same stake, and it cannot account for house rules at a particular venue. We review it when a rule or source changes; the formulas are on our how we calculate odds page.