iGaming Journalist & Crypto Casino Analyst
The casino house edge is the single number that determines how much a game costs to play over time, and it varies by a factor of more than 200 across the games sitting on a typical casino floor. A craps player taking full odds behind the pass line faces an edge of roughly 0.37%. A player betting the Lucky Ladies side bet at the blackjack table next to him faces about 17%. Both games are legal, both are certified, and both are described by the same word — "casino" — but the second one destroys a bankroll roughly 46 times faster than the first.
This page collects the published house edge and return-to-player figures for every major casino game category, alongside the regulatory minimums that govern slot payouts in US states, the documented drift in Nevada's slot hold percentage, and a modelled breakdown of what each edge actually costs per hour of play. It is built as a reference: bookmark it, cite it, argue with it.
Key Findings
Craps with full odds (0.37%) and full-pay Deuces Wild video poker (100.76% return) sit at the player-friendly extreme; Lucky Ladies (17%) and 21+3 on four decks (8.78%) sit at the other. Switching a blackjack table from 3:2 to 6:5 payouts raises the house edge by roughly 1.4 percentage points. Nevada's average slot hold reached 7.1% in 2025, up from 6.55% in 2004. Legal minimum slot returns range from 75% in Nevada to 87% in Maryland.
House Edge, Hold and RTP Are Three Different Numbers
House edge
House edge is the casino's expected profit expressed as a percentage of the amount wagered on a single decision. A 1.06% edge on the baccarat banker bet means that, averaged across millions of hands, the house keeps 1.06 cents of every dollar staked on that bet. It says nothing about how likely you are to win any individual hand — the banker bet actually wins slightly more often than it loses, which is precisely why the 5% commission exists.
Return to player (RTP)
RTP is the same statistic inverted and is the standard used for slots and video poker. A 96% RTP game carries a 4% house edge. The two terms are interchangeable arithmetic, but they are not interchangeable in practice: RTP is typically a manufacturer-certified figure derived from the game's mathematics, verified by an independent test lab before the game is approved for a regulated market.
Hold percentage
Hold is an operational statistic, not a mathematical one. It measures the percentage of money brought to a game that the casino actually retained, which depends on how long players recycle their winnings. Table game hold is typically far higher than table game house edge — a blackjack pit might show 15% hold on a game with a 0.5% theoretical edge — because players replay the same chips dozens of times. For slots, coin-in based hold and the complement of RTP converge closely, which is why regulators report them together.
Confusing these three numbers is the most common error in gambling commentary. When a headline says a casino "kept 20% of blackjack money," that is hold, not edge, and it does not mean the game is beating players out of a fifth of every bet. Our poker and gambling glossary keeps the definitions separate.
Casino House Edge by Game: The Reference Table
The figures below reflect commonly published standard rule sets. Every one of these numbers moves with rules and paytables — the table gives the benchmark, and the sections that follow show how far each can drift.
| Game / Bet | House Edge | Category | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Craps — pass line with full odds | ~0.37% | Dice | Best table-game number available; requires maximum odds backing |
| Blackjack — liberal rules, basic strategy | ~0.50% | Cards | 3:2 payout, dealer stands soft 17 |
| Craps — don't pass / don't come | 1.36% | Dice | Marginally better than pass line |
| Craps — pass line (no odds) | 1.41% | Dice | Baseline line bet |
| Baccarat — banker | 1.06% | Cards | After 5% commission |
| Baccarat — player | 1.24% | Cards | No commission |
| Blackjack — average rules, basic strategy | 0.50%–2.00% | Cards | Range depends on deck count and rules |
| Roulette — European (single zero) | 2.70% | Wheel | 37 pockets |
| Roulette — American (double zero) | 5.26% | Wheel | 38 pockets; nearly double the European figure |
| Baccarat — tie | ~9% | Cards | Highest edge on the baccarat layout |
| Slots | 2%–15% | Machine | Enormous variance by venue and denomination |
Two patterns are worth pulling out. First, the games with the lowest edges are all games of decision — craps odds bets, blackjack basic strategy, video poker — where the player's choices are part of the mathematics. Second, the spread within a single game is often larger than the spread between games. American and European roulette are the same game with one extra pocket, and that pocket almost doubles the cost.
Blackjack: The Rules Are the Game
Blackjack is quoted as a sub-1% game more often than any other, and that quote is frequently wrong for the table actually in front of you. The published 0.5% figure assumes a specific rule set. Change the rules and the number moves substantially.
| Rule Variation | Approximate Effect on House Edge | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Blackjack pays 6:5 instead of 3:2 | +1.4 percentage points | Worse for player |
| Dealer hits soft 17 | +0.2 percentage points | Worse for player |
| 6:5 payout alone (otherwise standard game) | Edge rises to ~1.9% | Worse for player |
| Baseline: 3:2, dealer stands soft 17, basic strategy | ~0.50% | Reference point |
The 6:5 change is the single most consequential rule shift in modern casino gaming. It converts a game with a house edge comparable to the best bets on the floor into one roughly four times more expensive, and it does so through a payout line printed on the felt that most casual players never read. A blackjack occurs about once in 21 hands, so the change is invisible on a hand-to-hand basis and brutal over a session.
Basic strategy is a prerequisite for any of these numbers. A player deviating from optimal play adds their own error rate on top of the structural edge, and the published research consistently puts the cost of untrained play well above the cost of any single bad rule. Our beginner strategy guides cover the decision framework that makes the quoted edge achievable.
Side Bets: Where the Edge Multiplies
Side bets are the highest-margin real estate on a table-game layout. They are optional, they are marketed on their payouts rather than their odds, and they routinely carry edges five to thirty times higher than the base game sitting an inch away on the same felt.
| Side Bet | House Edge | Comparison to Base Blackjack (0.5%) |
|---|---|---|
| Lucky Ladies | ~17% | 34x |
| 21+3 — four decks | 8.78% | ~18x |
| 21+3 — five decks | 7.81% | ~16x |
| 21+3 — six decks | 7.14% | ~14x |
| 21+3 — seven decks | 6.29% | ~13x |
| Perfect Pairs | 5%–7% | 10x–14x |
| Side bets generally | 5%–15% | 10x–30x |
The 21+3 deck-count progression is unusually instructive because it isolates a single variable. Adding decks makes suited-card combinations marginally more likely, so a seven-deck shoe reduces the edge from 8.78% to 6.29% — a 28% reduction in cost — with no change to strategy or paytable. Almost nobody chooses a table on that basis, which is the point: the parameters that drive side-bet pricing are not the parameters players notice.
Video Poker: The Only Games That Can Cross 100%
Video poker is the exception to every generalisation about machine gaming. Because the paytable is printed on the screen and the deck composition is fixed, the return is fully computable, and a handful of full-pay schedules return more than 100% to a perfect player.
| Variant | Return with Optimal Play | House Edge | Conditions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-pay Deuces Wild | 100.76% | Negative (player edge) | Full-pay schedule, variant-specific strategy, 5-credit play; increasingly rare |
| 9/6 Jacks or Better | 99.54% | 0.46% | Full-pay 9/6 paytable, perfect strategy, 5-credit play |
| Reduced paytables (8/5, 7/5 etc.) | Materially lower | Higher | Same game, worse schedule |
Three conditions attach to every one of those returns and all three matter. The paytable must be the full-pay version — the "9/6" refers to the payouts for a full house and a flush, and a machine paying 8/5 is a visibly identical game with a meaningfully worse return. Strategy must be variant-specific, because optimal play for Deuces Wild bears little resemblance to optimal play for Jacks or Better. And play must be at maximum credits, because the royal flush bonus at five coins is what carries the top of the return.
Miss any of the three and the advertised number does not apply to you. This is the general lesson of the whole page: published edges are conditional statements, and the conditions are usually where the money is.
Slots: The Regulated Floor Versus the Real Number
State minimum payout requirements
US states set statutory floors on slot returns. Those floors vary widely, and in most jurisdictions they sit far below what machines actually pay.
| Jurisdiction | Minimum Slot Payout | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Nevada | 75% | Lowest headline minimum among major markets |
| New Jersey | 83% | Statutory floor |
| Michigan | 83% | Statutory floor |
| Maryland | 87% | Highest of the group |
| Minnesota | 80%–95% | Range set by tribal compacts |
| West Virginia | 80%–99.9% | Wide permitted band for casinos and racetracks |
The 75% Nevada minimum is frequently misquoted as the typical return. It is not. The Nevada Gaming Control Board has stated that modern machines typically return roughly 90% to players over time — the statutory minimum functions as a legal outer bound, not a design target.
Nevada hold has drifted upward
The measured hold data shows a slow, consistent tightening. Nevada's average slot hold reached 7.1% in 2025, compared with 6.55% in 2004 — an increase of roughly 0.55 percentage points, or about 8% more retained per dollar cycled, across two decades. The board has said any tightening falls within legal limits.
The geographic spread within a single state is wider than that twenty-year drift. The Las Vegas Strip recorded the highest average hold at 7.5%; Reno recorded the lowest at 5.21%. A player moving between two Nevada markets experiences a larger change in expected cost than a player time-travelling from 2004 to 2025 on the Strip.
Online versus land-based
The gap between online and land-based slot returns is the largest structural difference in the modern casino business. Slots in the legal US online casino market return approximately 96% on average, with some titles running to 98% and a handful of special cases approaching 99%. Land-based penny slots, by contrast, are widely reported in the 85%–90% range, with estimates for the penny denomination specifically clustering around 86%–88%.
That is a gap of roughly six to ten percentage points on identical or near-identical game content. The explanation is competitive rather than technical: online operators compete on published RTP figures that players can look up before playing, while a physical penny-slot floor faces a demographic that historically has not checked. Anyone comparing venues should start from the published figures rather than the marketing — our online casino comparisons and the wider casino section list the operator-level detail.
What the Edge Costs Per Hour
House edge only becomes intuitive when multiplied by decision speed. The table below models expected loss per hour at representative decision rates. These are our calculations, not sourced figures, and they assume flat betting with no comps or promotional value.
| Game | Edge | Decisions/Hour (modelled) | Bet Size | Expected Loss/Hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Craps, pass with full odds | 0.37% | 30 | $10 | ~$1.11 |
| Blackjack, liberal rules | 0.50% | 70 | $10 | ~$3.50 |
| Baccarat, banker | 1.06% | 70 | $10 | ~$7.42 |
| Blackjack, 6:5 table | 1.90% | 70 | $10 | ~$13.30 |
| European roulette | 2.70% | 40 | $10 | ~$10.80 |
| American roulette | 5.26% | 40 | $10 | ~$21.04 |
| 21+3 side bet (six deck) | 7.14% | 70 | $5 | ~$25.00 |
| Online slot at 96% RTP | 4.00% | 600 | $0.50 | ~$12.00 |
| Land-based penny slot at 87% | 13.00% | 600 | $0.50 | ~$39.00 |
The ordering here differs sharply from the ordering by edge alone. Slots carry a mid-range edge by percentage but sit near the top by hourly cost, because 600 spins per hour is roughly nine times the decision rate of a blackjack table. Speed is the multiplier that most players ignore entirely, and it is the reason a "cheap" 4% online slot can cost more per hour than a 5.26% roulette wheel.
Methodology
House edge and RTP figures in this article were compiled from published industry references, regulator statements and operator-facing documentation gathered in September 2026, and cross-checked across at least two independent sources where the figure is contested. Where a range is reported rather than a point estimate — blackjack at 0.5%–2%, Perfect Pairs at 5%–7%, slots at 2%–15% — we have reproduced the range rather than selecting a midpoint, because the range itself is the finding.
Regulatory minimums are drawn from state statute and tribal compact summaries. Nevada hold figures are as reported from Nevada Gaming Control Board data. Expected-loss-per-hour figures in the final table are our own calculations using the stated edges and modelled decision rates; decision rates are conventional industry estimates for a moderately busy table or a continuous-play machine and will vary with table fullness, dealer speed and player pace. No figure in this article was estimated or interpolated where a published number exists.
Where sources disagreed — most commonly on the exact boundaries of the slots range and on side-bet edges, which are paytable-dependent — we report the more conservative (higher-edge) figure and note the dependency.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which casino game has the lowest house edge?
Craps with full odds behind the pass line, at approximately 0.37%, is the lowest edge available on a standard casino floor. Full-pay Deuces Wild video poker can return 100.76% with perfect play, which is a player advantage rather than a house edge, but the required full-pay schedules are increasingly rare and the strategy is demanding.
Does a low house edge mean I will win?
No. House edge describes the long-run average cost per dollar wagered, not the outcome of any session. A 0.5% edge game still produces losing sessions the majority of the time once the edge and variance are compounded across enough decisions, and short-run results are dominated by variance rather than edge.
Why is American roulette so much worse than European roulette?
The double-zero pocket. American wheels have 38 pockets to European roulette's 37, but the payouts are identical. That single extra pocket raises the house edge from 2.70% to 5.26% — nearly double the cost for a game that looks and plays the same.
Are online slots really better value than land-based slots?
On published return figures, yes. Legal US online slots average around 96% RTP, while land-based penny slots are commonly reported at 85%–90% and penny denominations specifically around 86%–88%. The gap reflects competitive dynamics — online RTPs are published and comparable — rather than any difference in the underlying game mathematics.
Should I ever take a blackjack side bet?
Not on expected value. Every commonly offered side bet carries a house edge multiples higher than the base game — from roughly 5% for Perfect Pairs to about 17% for Lucky Ladies, against 0.5% for well-played blackjack. Side bets are entertainment purchases, and pricing them as such is the honest framing.
Sources
- Casino.org — Casino House Edge Explained
- Nevada Gaming Control Board — Statistics & Publications
- Wizard of Odds — Deuces Wild return tables
- Blackjack Review — 6:5 blackjack house edge analysis
- PokerNews — Blackjack side bet odds and house advantage
- American Casino Guide — Slot machine payback statistics
- Casino.org — Nevada slot hold trend reporting
Cite This Article
If you use data from this article, please link back to https://www.deucescracked.com/blog/casino-house-edge-by-game-data. For related reference material, see our guides library.
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