House Edge by Casino Game: Which Games Give Players the Best Odds?
If you want the casino games with the best odds, the answer is short: blackjack and full-pay video poker, where correct play drops the house edge under half a percent. Baccarat’s Banker bet (about 1.06%) and craps Pass-line bets backed with free odds aren’t far behind. Slots, the Tie bet in baccarat, and American roulette? That’s where the house does its heaviest lifting.
Every game on the floor is built around the house edge — the slice of each dollar the casino expects to keep over the long run. The gap between the best and worst games is huge: roughly half a percent on a good blackjack table versus double digits on the worst bets in the building. Here’s how all seven of the big ones stack up, and how to play the ones worth playing.
What the House Edge Really Means for Your Money
The house edge is the percentage of every dollar you wager that the casino expects to keep over the long run. A 5% edge means that, averaged across thousands of bets, the house keeps a nickel of every dollar that crosses the felt — and gives the rest back as winnings. It’s not a per-spin tax you feel on any single bet; it’s the slow gravity that pulls a bankroll downhill the longer you play.
That number is fixed math, baked into the rules and payouts of each game. You can’t out-luck it over time, but you absolutely control which edge you’re playing against. Pick a 0.5% game over a 5% game and you’ve cut your expected hourly loss by a factor of ten before the cards are even dealt. If you want the deeper mechanics — how it’s calculated and why it’s unbeatable in the long run — we break it down in our explainer on what the casino house edge actually is.
Say you bet $50 a hand, 60 hands an hour. At blackjack’s 0.5% edge, your expected loss is about $15 an hour. Make the same bets at American roulette’s 5.26% edge and that jumps to roughly $158 an hour. Same money, same time — ten times the bleed.
House Edge by Casino Game, Ranked
Ranked from best odds to worst, the order is blackjack and full-pay video poker (under 0.5%), then baccarat’s Banker bet and craps line bets, then European roulette, and finally American roulette and slots. The catch is that every one of these numbers assumes you make the right bet — the same game can hand you a 0.5% edge or a 16% edge depending on which chip you push out.
| Game (best bet) | House Edge | Return to Player |
|---|---|---|
| Video poker (9/6 Jacks or Better, optimal play) | ~0.46% | ~99.54% |
| Blackjack (basic strategy, 3:2 payout) | ~0.5% | ~99.5% |
| Craps (Pass/Come + free odds) | ~0.4%–1.41% | ~98.6%–99.6% |
| Baccarat (Banker bet) | ~1.06% | ~98.94% |
| European roulette (single zero) | ~2.70% | ~97.3% |
| Slots (most machines) | ~2%–15% | ~85%–98% |
| American roulette (double zero) | ~5.26% | ~94.74% |
Two patterns jump out. First, the skill games — blackjack and video poker — reward you for learning correct play, while the pure-chance games lock their edge in no matter what you do. Second, “live dealer” doesn’t appear as its own row, and that’s on purpose: a live blackjack table carries the same edge as any other blackjack table (more on that at the end). The numbers themselves aren’t controversial, either — the probability math behind each game’s house edge is settled and public.
Blackjack: The Best Odds on the Floor — If You Play It Right
Blackjack offers one of the lowest house edges in the casino — around 0.5% when you use basic strategy at a standard 3:2 table, and as low as 0.28% under the most liberal Vegas rules. Most blackjack games land somewhere in the 0.5% to 1% range, which is why the table is a fixture of every “smart money” conversation in the building.
The magic word is strategy. Blackjack is one of the few games where your decisions change the math. Basic strategy — the memorized chart of when to hit, stand, double, and split — is what squeezes the edge down toward half a percent. Play on feel instead, and you hand the house an extra point or two for free. Skill narrows the gap dramatically, but to be clear: even perfect play never erases the edge entirely. The house still wins a hair more than you do over the long run. That’s the deal.
Here’s the trap that quietly ruins the math: the payout on a natural blackjack. The classic 3:2 payout returns $15 on a winning $10 blackjack. A growing number of tables — especially low-limit ones — pay only 6:5, which returns $12 on that same hand. It sounds tiny. It isn’t.
A 6:5 blackjack payout adds about 1.4% to the house edge, turning a great 0.5% game into a mediocre 1.9% one — worse than baccarat. Look for “Blackjack pays 3 to 2” printed on the felt. If it says “pays 6 to 5,” walk to another table.
If you’re the type who’ll actually learn the chart, blackjack belongs at the top of your list. It’s one of the games where effort pays — a theme we explore in our look at the most profitable casino games for skilled players.
Video Poker: Almost a Coin Flip on the Right Machine
Full-pay 9/6 Jacks or Better returns 99.54% with optimal strategy — a house edge of just 0.46%, the lowest number on this entire list. The “9/6” refers to the paytable: nine coins for a full house, six for a flush. Find that machine, play it perfectly, and you’re as close to an even-money fight as a casino will ever give you.
Two conditions hide inside that 99.54%, and both matter. Miss either one and the friendly number evaporates.
- Bet max coins. The royal flush pays 800-to-1 only on a five-coin bet; bet fewer and it drops to 250-to-1. That single change pushes the return from 99.54% down to about 98.01%, even with flawless decisions.
- Find the full-pay table. Short-pay machines (8/5, 7/5, and worse) look identical from across the room but pay less on full houses and flushes, quietly tacking a percent or more onto the edge. The paytable, not the cabinet, is the game.
Video poker rewards patience and a strategy card the same way blackjack does. The difference is that nobody’s judging you for reading the chart at the machine — so there’s no excuse not to.
Baccarat: Bet the Banker, Skip the Tie
Baccarat’s Banker bet carries a house edge of about 1.06%, one of the best odds in the casino for a game that requires zero strategy. You make one of three bets, the cards are dealt and drawn by fixed rules, and you never have to make a decision. That simplicity is exactly why high-rollers from the Las Vegas Strip to Macau bet six figures a hand on it.
The three bets are not created equal, and the spread between them is brutal:
- Banker (~1.06%): The best bet on the table. It pays even money minus a 5% commission — the casino charges that commission precisely because the Banker hand wins slightly more than half the time.
- Player (~1.24%): Still perfectly respectable, pays even money with no commission. A fine bet if you’d rather skip the commission math.
- Tie (~14.36%): A sucker bet dressed up with a tempting 8:1 payout. The edge is roughly fourteen times worse than the Banker bet. Admire it from a distance.
The whole game comes down to one rule of thumb: bet the Banker, take the small commission, and never let the Tie’s flashy payout pull you in. If baccarat’s your speed, our beginner’s guide to baccarat walks through the game hand by hand.
Craps: Low Edge Up Front, Traps Everywhere Else
The Pass Line bet in craps carries a 1.41% house edge, and the Don’t Pass bet is a touch lower at 1.36% — solid numbers that get genuinely great once you add “free odds.” Behind any line bet, the casino lets you place an odds bet that pays true mathematical odds, with a 0% house edge. Stack enough odds on a Pass Line bet (at common 3-4-5x tables) and the blended edge drops to roughly 0.37% per dollar wagered. That’s the cheapest action on the floor.
The problem is that a craps layout is a minefield of beautiful-looking bets that are quietly terrible. The center of the table — the proposition bets — is where bankrolls go to die.
- Best bets: Pass / Don’t Pass and Come / Don’t Come (~1.4%), made even better with free odds behind them (~0.37% blended). Place 6 and Place 8 (~1.5%) are reasonable too.
- Worst bets: Any Seven sits at a brutal ~16.67% — one of the worst bets in the entire casino. The 2, 12, and hard hops run around ~13.89%. The flashier the proposition, the deeper the hole.
When the dealer calls for action on the hardways or “any craps,” that’s the casino steering you toward its highest-edge bets. The smart craps player makes line bets, backs them with odds, and tunes out the center of the table entirely.
Roulette: One Extra Pocket Doubles the Damage
European roulette carries a 2.70% house edge, while American roulette nearly doubles it to 5.26% — and the only difference between the two wheels is a single pocket. European wheels have 37 pockets (numbers 1–36 plus a single zero). American wheels add a double zero for 38 pockets. The payouts are identical on both; that extra green pocket just hands the house a second way to win.
The takeaway writes itself: if both wheels are available, always play single-zero European roulette. You get the same game, the same bets, and the same payouts at roughly half the cost. Refusing to play the double-zero wheel is one of the easiest edge-cutting decisions in the casino — like choosing the shorter checkout line when both ring up the same groceries.
Slots: Easy to Play, Hard to Beat
Slots have some of the widest and least favorable odds in the casino, with a house edge that typically runs anywhere from 2% to 15% (an RTP of roughly 85% to 98%). There’s no strategy to learn and no decision that changes the math — you press the button and the random number generator does the rest. That’s the appeal and the cost in one package.
Where you play matters more than which machine you pick. Online slots average around 96% RTP (a 4% edge) because operators run on thin overhead, while land-based machines often pay back less — commonly in the 88% to 93% range on the casino floor. And the floor is set low by law: Nevada’s regulatory minimum payback is just 75%. Casinos rarely publish the RTP of any individual machine, so you’re usually playing blind.
None of that means slots are rigged — they’re not. The outcomes are random; the house edge is just built into the long-run payout percentage, exactly like every other game. We dug into the data and the myths in our piece on the truth about slot payout rates. Play them for the entertainment, set a budget, and treat any win as a bonus rather than a plan.
Live Dealer Games: Same Math, Better Atmosphere
Live dealer games carry the exact same house edge as their standard counterparts, because they are the same games — just dealt by a real person on a video stream instead of by software. Live blackjack runs the same ~0.5% with basic strategy, live European roulette the same 2.70%, live baccarat the same ~1.06% on the Banker. The math is set by the rules and the paytable, and a camera doesn’t change either.
What does change is the experience, and one quiet upside. A human dealer is slower than a one-button piece of software, so a live table runs fewer rounds per hour. At the same house edge, fewer bets per hour means less total money exposed to that edge — so a relaxed live session can cost you less over an evening than blasting through hundreds of rapid hands online. Just check the rules at the specific table before you sit, the same way you would in person. You’ll find the full menu of live and software games across any modern online casino.
So, Which Casino Games Give You the Best Odds?
If you want the best odds in the house, learn basic strategy and play blackjack at a 3:2 table, or hunt down a full-pay 9/6 video poker machine — both sit under a 0.5% edge. Don’t want to learn anything? Bet the Banker in baccarat (~1.06%) or stick to Pass-line bets with odds in craps. Want to spin a wheel? Make it the single-zero European one. And treat slots, the baccarat Tie, and American roulette as entertainment you’re paying a premium for, not a way to get ahead.
The house always keeps its edge in the end — that’s how casinos stay in business. But the edge you play against is the one lever genuinely in your hands. Choosing the right game and the right bet is the difference between a night of cheap entertainment and an expensive one. Play the good numbers, set a budget you can lose without flinching, and let the rest be fun.
Best odds: blackjack and 9/6 video poker (under 0.5%), then baccarat Banker and craps with odds. Middle of the pack: European roulette (2.70%). Worst odds: American roulette (5.26%), most slots (4–15%), and trap bets like the baccarat Tie and craps Any Seven.
Play Safe: Gambling should be fun, not stressful. Set limits, stick to your budget, and never chase losses. No game can be beaten in the long run, so play for entertainment, not income. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800-MY-RESET or visit ncpgambling.org. For more resources, see our Responsible Gambling page.
Frequently Asked Questions
A few of the questions players ask most often about casino odds and the house edge — answered in plain English.
Which casino game actually gives you the best odds of winning?
Blackjack and full-pay video poker give you the best odds, both with a house edge under 0.5% when you play correctly. Blackjack with basic strategy on a 3:2 table runs about 0.5%, and full-pay 9/6 Jacks or Better video poker returns 99.54% (a 0.46% edge) with optimal play and max coins. Baccarat’s Banker bet (~1.06%) and craps Pass-line bets backed with free odds are the next best options.
Is blackjack really better than slots, or does it just feel that way?
It’s genuinely better, and it’s not close. A good blackjack game has a house edge around 0.5%, while most slots run between 2% and 15%. On the same money, you’d expect to lose several times more per hour on slots than at a blackjack table you play with basic strategy.
What does a 5% house edge actually cost me over a night of play?
Roughly $158 an hour if you bet $50 a hand at 60 hands per hour, which is about what American roulette’s 5.26% edge works out to. Drop to a 0.5% game like blackjack and that same play has an expected loss closer to $15 an hour. The house edge is a long-run average, so any single session can swing well above or below it.
Are the odds different when I play live dealer games online versus the software version?
No, the house edge is identical because it’s the same game with the same rules and payouts, just dealt by a person on camera instead of by software. Live tables do run fewer hands per hour than fast software games, so a live session can expose less of your money to the edge over the same amount of time. Always check the specific table’s rules before you sit, since rule tweaks can shift the edge.
Can I ever beat the house edge if I get really good at a game?
Skill can shrink the edge to almost nothing in games like blackjack and video poker, but it never flips the long-run math in your favor on a standard game. Correct strategy gets blackjack down toward 0.5% and full-pay video poker to about 0.46%, which is as close to even as the casino offers. Over enough hands the house still comes out ahead, so the smart move is to treat any game as paid entertainment, not income.
Why do casinos make so much money from slots if blackjack has better odds?
Slots combine a high house edge with enormous volume — they’re fast, easy, require no strategy, and fill most of the floor, so even a 4% to 15% edge adds up to huge revenue. Blackjack has far better odds for the player, but it’s slower, takes skill, and occupies fewer seats. Volume and ease of play, not better odds, are why slots are the casino’s biggest earner.
