House Edge, Ranked: Which Casino Games Give You the Best Shot

All casino games cost money in the long run, but the price varies by a factor of forty. Here is where the major games actually stand, and the trap bets hiding inside otherwise decent ones.

The ranking

Game / bet	House edge
Blackjack (basic strategy, good rules)	0.4–0.6%
Baccarat — banker	1.06%
Craps — pass line	1.41%
Baccarat — player	1.24%
European roulette (single zero)	2.70%
Blackjack (guessing, no strategy)	~2–4%
American roulette (double zero)	5.26%
Craps — field bet	5.56%
Baccarat — tie	14.4%
Craps — any 7	16.7%
Keno	20–35%

House edge is just negative expected value expressed as a percentage of your wager — the average cut the casino keeps from every bet you make.

What the numbers mean in practice

Betting $25 a hand for an hour (~70 hands of blackjack, ~50 spins of roulette):

• Blackjack with basic strategy: ~$9 expected cost
• American roulette: ~$66 expected cost
• Keno at the same pace: several hundred dollars

Same hour, same stakes, wildly different prices. Game selection is the single biggest lever a recreational player has.

The trap bets

The worst prices in the casino sit next to the best ones:

• Baccarat’s tie bet (14.4%) is on the same felt as the banker bet (1.06%).
• Craps proposition bets (9–17%) are in the middle of a table whose pass line gives up just 1.41%.
• Blackjack side bets like Perfect Pairs and 21+3 typically run 5–10% — ten times the main game.
• Insurance in blackjack is a 7.4% bet dressed up as protection.

A good rule: the more a bet pays relative to your stake, and the more excited the layout looks about it, the more it costs.

Rules details that move the price

Within blackjack alone, rules shift the edge meaningfully: 3:2 blackjack payouts versus 6:5 is worth about 1.4% — a 6:5 table roughly triples the cost of playing well. Dealer standing on soft 17, doubling after split, and late surrender each shave off tenths of a percent. The sign on the table tells you the price if you know how to read it.

The takeaway

You choose your house edge the moment you sit down. Pick the low-edge games, stick to the low-edge bets inside them, and treat anything paying 8-to-1 or better as a souvenir stand.