House edge calculator
Choose a game, enter your bet and how many hands you play per hour, and this returns the house edge, RTP and your expected loss per hand and per hour. Video poker figures marked with a check come straight from our own engines; the rest are established published edges.
What the house edge actually means
The house edge is the casino's built-in advantage on a bet, written as the percentage of each wager the house keeps over the long run. At a 1% house edge, every $100 you put into action costs about $1 on average once enough hands are played. It is not a fee on a single hand and not your chance of losing one — it is a rate, the average share of every dollar wagered that the house retains. Its mirror image is return to player: RTP is simply 100% minus the house edge, so a 0.5% edge returns 99.5% of all money bet over time.
House edge of every casino table game
Here is the house edge for the main casino games under correct or optimal play, ordered from lowest to highest. Rows marked "our engine" are edges our own game engines compute exactly; the rest are established published figures.
| Game (optimal play) | House edge | RTP | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Video Poker — NSU Deuces Wild | 0.27% | 99.73% | our engine ✓ |
| Spanish 21 (dealer stands soft 17) | 0.40% | 99.60% | published |
| Video Poker — 9/6 Jacks or Better | 0.46% | 99.54% | our engine ✓ |
| Blackjack — basic strategy (6-deck, S17) | 0.50% | 99.50% | published |
| Baccarat — Banker | 1.06% | 98.94% | published |
| Baccarat — Player | 1.24% | 98.76% | published |
| Craps — Pass / Come | 1.41% | 98.59% | published |
| Ultimate Texas Hold'em (Ante) | 2.19% | 97.81% | published |
| Pai Gow Poker (house way) | 2.50% | 97.50% | published |
| Roulette — European (single zero) | 2.70% | 97.30% | published |
| Three Card Poker (Ante-Play) | 3.37% | 96.63% | published |
| Let It Ride | 3.51% | 96.49% | published |
| Caribbean Stud Poker | 5.22% | 94.78% | published |
| Roulette — American (double zero) | 5.26% | 94.74% | published |
| Slots (typical) | ~6% | ~94% | published |
| Baccarat — Tie | 14.36% | 85.64% | published |
| Keno (typical) | ~25% | ~75% | published |
The lowest and highest edges — and why
The lowest house edge games share one feature: skill matters and the pay tables are generous. Full-pay video poker leads because a perfect strategy exists and the top pay tables were designed to return over 99% — our engine puts 9/6 Jacks or Better at 0.46% and NSU Deuces Wild at just 0.27%. Blackjack and Spanish 21 follow at roughly 0.40–0.50% with accurate basic strategy, and baccarat's banker bet reaches 1.06% with no strategy at all. At the other end, the damage comes from luck-only formats and tempting side bets: American roulette's double zero doubles its edge to 5.26% versus the European 2.70%, Caribbean Stud sits above 5% because the dealer's qualification rule quietly caps your wins, and the baccarat tie bet hides an enormous 14%+ edge behind an exciting payout.
How the house edge is calculated
At its core the house edge is a weighted average: take every possible outcome of a bet, multiply each outcome's probability by its net payoff, add them up, and express the total as a fraction of the amount wagered. For a single roulette number the arithmetic is short; for video poker, where the optimal play of each hand changes the outcome distribution, it takes real computation — which is exactly what our engines do. For our video poker edges we do not estimate: we exhaustively enumerate all 2,598,960 possible five-card deals, apply the optimal hold to each, and average the exact return, which is how we can state 0.46% for 9/6 Jacks or Better to the fourth decimal. Every figure above assumes correct play; strategy mistakes push your personal edge above the number shown.
House edge vs element of risk
On games where you make a second bet after seeing your cards, the edge can be quoted two ways. The plain house edge measures expected loss against your original bet; the element of risk measures it against the total you actually put at stake, including raises. Let It Ride has a 3.51% house edge on the base bet but an element of risk near 2.85%, because you pull two of your three bets so often. Neither number is wrong — they answer different questions — but comparing games fairly means comparing like with like.
Why players lose more than the edge suggests
The house edge is the cost per dollar wagered, not per dollar you bring — and volume is why real losses run higher. Every time you rewager a winning, that new bet faces the edge again, so a low-edge game played fast can cost more than a higher-edge game played slowly. That is the whole point of the calculator above: a 0.5% edge is meaningless until you multiply it by your average bet and your hands per hour. Use it to price any game, then dig into the correct play for each one through the casino table games hub.
Frequently asked questions
What is the house edge?
The house edge is the built-in mathematical advantage a casino has on a bet, expressed as the percentage of each wager the house expects to keep over the long run. A 1% house edge means you lose about $1 of every $100 wagered on average.
Which casino games have the lowest house edge?
The lowest house edges among common games belong to full-pay video poker (about 0.27–0.46%), Spanish 21 and blackjack with basic strategy (about 0.40–0.50%), and baccarat on the banker bet (1.06%). Video poker and blackjack reward correct strategy the most.
How is the house edge calculated?
The house edge is the sum of each outcome's probability multiplied by its net payoff, expressed as a fraction of the bet. For our video poker games we compute it by exhaustively enumerating every possible hand; for other games it comes from established combinatorial analysis of the rules and pay tables.
House edges reflect correct or optimal play under common US rules; specific pay tables and table rules shift the exact numbers. Educational content about probability, not gambling advice.