Which Casino Games Have the Best Odds?

Full-pay video poker and blackjack have the best odds in a US online casino, at about 0.46% and 0.5% house edge respectively when played with correct strategy, followed by baccarat’s banker bet at 1.06%, while online slots run roughly 3% to 12%. Those numbers are stable industry math, not opinion. What makes them conditional is the rules you play under and whether you play correctly, which this page covers in full, along with the part almost no ranking page explains: what a house edge actually costs you in dollars.

The ranking, with numbers

Every figure below assumes the stated bet and conditions. Skill-dependent games assume correct play.

A note on the craps rows: those are the figures per bet you make, which is the standard way they are quoted. Measured per bet actually resolved, don’t pass is 1.40% rather than 1.36%, because the barred 12 pushes instead of resolving. On a per-roll basis both drop to about 0.4%.

Why the same game can have very different odds

The figures above belong to specific bets under specific rules. Change the rules and you change the game, even though the lobby still shows the same name:

• Blackjack paying 6:5 instead of 3:2. This single change adds 1.39 percentage points in a standard six-deck game, nearly triple the entire edge of a good blackjack table. Check the payout before you sit.
• Video poker paytables. The 0.46% figure belongs to the full-pay 9/6 paytable, meaning nine coins for a full house and six for a flush. Short-pay versions of the identical-looking game can be several times worse, and the paytable is the game.
• Baccarat’s tie bet. 14.36% at the standard 8:1 payout, roughly thirteen times worse than the banker bet at the same table. Where a table pays 9:1 instead, the tie edge falls to about 4.84%, which is still the worst bet available there.
• Roulette’s versions. Single zero is 2.70%, double zero is 5.26%. Some US casinos also offer French tables with la partage, where half your even-money stake comes back on zero, cutting that edge to 1.35%, better than either standard wheel. On a double-zero wheel, avoid the five-number bet, which is 7.89%.

The lesson is that “which game has the best odds” is the wrong question by itself. The right one is which bet, under which rules.

What a house edge actually costs you

Here is where most players misjudge things badly. The house edge applies to everything you wager, not to what you deposited.

Say you sit down with $200 and play $5 hands of blackjack at roughly 0.5%. If you play 300 hands, you have wagered $1,500, and your expected loss is about $7.50, not 0.5% of your $200. Now run the same $200 through 300 slot spins at $2 at a 6% edge, mid-range for online slots: you have wagered $600 and your expected loss is about $36, nearly five times more, from a smaller total wagered. Per dollar wagered the gap is wider still, twelve times.

And those 300 spins take under an hour, while 300 blackjack hands take several, which is the multiplier the next section covers.

Speed is the multiplier everyone ignores

Expected loss per hour is the house edge multiplied by your bet size multiplied by how many rounds you play per hour. The third term is the one nobody thinks about, and online it is enormous.

Online slots run somewhere around 300 to 800 spins an hour. Online blackjack against software runs a few hundred hands an hour and can pass a thousand on autoplay. A live dealer blackjack table deals roughly 30 to 100 hands an hour depending on how full it is. For context, a physical casino blackjack table deals about 70 hands an hour.

This means a game with a worse edge played slowly can cost less per hour than a better game played fast. If you want your money to last, slowing down is as effective as switching games, and it is the reason live dealer casino games are cheaper per hour than their identical software versions.

Where slots fit, and why people still play them

Slots sit near the bottom of the table and remain the most played category by a wide margin. That is not irrational. Slots require nothing to learn, offer enormous variety, and occasionally pay life-changing amounts. They are entertainment products, priced accordingly. If you play them, the useful move is not to avoid them but to pick better ones and understand the number: see best online slots.

One connection worth knowing if you take bonuses: the good-odds games on this page are usually the ones bonus terms exclude or weight down. At BetMGM, slots count 100% toward playthrough while table games and live dealer count 20% and software blackjack counts 10%. At DraftKings, live dealer counts around 10% and craps and baccarat count nothing at all. That is not a coincidence. The details are in casino money.

The honest bottom line

Virtually no game in a US online casino has a positive expected value for the player. The one textbook exception, a full-pay Deuces Wild paytable that returns over 100% to a perfect player, is essentially absent from US regulated lobbies, and no betting system changes the math on anything else. Better odds buy you time, not profit: at 0.5% your money lasts a long while, at 10% it does not. Anyone promising otherwise is selling something.

For the number behind all of this, see what RTP means, or go back to casino games and odds for the overview. Legal US online casinos are 21+; if gambling stops being fun, call or text 1-800-GAMBLER or see our responsible gambling resources.