Casino Game Odds

The most popular game in the casino is blackjack. One big reason is it offers the best odds of any table game. Blackjack is one of the few casino games that is not purely a game of chance. How well you play affects how much money you win. Depending on your skill level and the house rules, the house edge for blackjack ranges from 0.1% to 3%. If you are an expert card counter, you can actually turn the odds in your favor by a percentage point or two.

Craps is another good choice for stretching your entertainment dollar -- as long as you know proper betting strategy. Craps is purely a game of chance. The only skill is knowing when to bet and, more importantly, when not to bet. Craps offers so many betting choices that it may seem more complicated than it's worth. Don't despair. Most of those bets are sucker bets that are bread and butter for the casinos and disastrous for you. The smart bettor will stick to a few standard bets. Two such bets are pass and come bets, which have a house edge of 1.41%. The house edge is a bit lower, 1.36%, if you bet don't pass or don't come. However, when you bet don't pass/don't come, you are betting "wrong," meaning you are betting against the table - you win when everyone else loses and you lose when everyone else wins. If you do this, just remember: don't be too obvious about it. It is against table etiquette to shout out numbers that would cause the shooter to lose. Whenever you have the opportunity to buy odds on pass line wagers, you should do so for the maximum bet allowed. Odds wagers can significantly reduce the house edge, and the bigger the maximum bet allowed for odds wagers, the better. For example, at a table where the maximum odds bet is the size of your original wager, the house edge is 0.85%. If an odds bet of twice your original wager is allowed, the house edge goes down to 0.61%. If you can find a table allowing odds bets of 100 times your original wager, the house edge is reduced to almost nothing (0.02%). These five bets are basically the only bets you should make at the craps table. All the fancy add-on bets you may find at your table are designed to make more money for the house. For example, the typical place bets have house edges of 1.52% to 6.67% and proposition bets range from 11.11 to 16.67%.

If you are looking for a simple game with a simple betting strategy, then baccarat may be for you. Baccarat is a card game that requires no skill to play. All playing decisions are made by set rules. The only choice the player makes is how much to bet and whether to bet on the banker, the player or a tie between the two. The best strategy is to bet for the banker to win every time. There is a 45.86% chance the banker will win, a 44.62% chance the player will win and a 9.52% chance they will tie. Because it is most likely the banker will win, the casino usually charges a 5% commission on winning banker bets. However, even with this 5% charge, the house edge for banker bets is only 1.06% compared to the house edge for player bets, which is 1.24%. The sucker bet is betting in favor of a tie. Ties usually pay 8-to-1, with a whopping house edge of 14.36%. Sometimes you can find a 9-to-1 payout, which reduces the edge to a more reasonable 4.8%. At some tables, banker wins are only charged a 4% commission. If you are lucky enough to be playing at one of these tables, the house edge is only 0.6%.

Another simple game is roulette. Roulette consists of a wheel with 18 red and 18 black slots. A ball is dropped on the spinning wheel, and players bet on what color the ball will stop. There's an equal chance of the ball stopping on red or black, so you might be fooled into thinking that you have an even chance of winning the game. Take a closer look at the wheel, though, and you will find a slot marked with a zero. This is how the house earns its money. That one extra slot gives them a 2.7% house edge. If the wheel has two blank slots, then they have a 5.26% edge. So before playing roulette, check the wheel and see just how much the odds are skewed in favor of the house.

Many gamblers skip the table games and head directly for the slot machines. The casino edge on slots can vary greatly from casino to casino and even from machine to machine. The range is from about 2% to 15%. It takes no skill to play a slot machine. The skill comes in trying to locate machines that pay out the highest percentage or that have a high expectation of hitting the jackpot. Generally, Las Vegas offers the best return on slots, and the slots in downtown Las Vegas offer better payout percentages than the ones on the Strip. It's often difficult to determine which machines in particular offer the best payout because the machines are not usually marked with the payout percentages. If there is a sign, make sure to read it carefully. A sign saying the machines in that particular area offer payouts "up to 97%" could mean that some machines offer 97% and the rest offer less. And often those better-paying machines will be scattered amongst lower-return machines with no indication of which is which. One good rule of thumb is the higher the coinage, the higher the return, which means a dollar machine pays out a higher percentage than a nickel machine will. In addition, casinos often increase the payout if you play the maximum coinage allowed in the machine. Also look for machines with bonuses that increase the more a player plays the machine. If you can find a jackpot machine that has been played awhile without hitting the jackpot, you could be looking at an expected rate of return of over 100%.

Video poker is a game of skill that, if played perfectly, can offer around a 100% rate of return. How can the casinos afford to provide machines with such a low house edge? Because most players will not play perfect poker. These average players will lose enough money to more than make up for the few expert players who actually win. There are many varieties of video poker available, such as Jacks or Better and Deuces Wild. The strategies will vary with the games; so make sure you know the appropriate strategy for the machine you've chosen to play. Part of a winning strategy is to find machines that pay out at the highest rates. Unlike other slot machines, the payout rate for video poker is listed on the machine. For example, a Jacks or Better machine that pays 9 betting units for a full house and 6 for a flush would yield a payout rate of 99.5%, while one that offers 9 for a full house and 7 for a flush would have a payout of 100.7%. Machines that offer 8 units for a full house and 5 units for a flush equate to a 97.3% payout. As with slot machines, your rate of return will be higher if you play the maximum number of coins the machine will allow. Thus, it is more profitable to play $5 in a $1 machine that allows a maximum $5 wager than to play a $5 machine and only play the minimum $5 bet.

In most cases, the worst value in the casino is keno. Keno is similar to the lottery, and your odds of winning aren't much better. The house advantage can be a whopping 21-35%. Progressive keno can offer a bit better odds, and the house edge for video keno is often a lot less than live keno. However, you are generally better off sticking to the slots than you are playing keno.

All casino games are designed to make you lose. The key is choosing one that enables you to lose at the slowest pace possible. By making informed choices, you can maximize your entertainment dollar, and maybe even walk out a winner.