Casino House Edge Statistics: Every Major Game in One Table (2026)

Blackjack played with perfect basic strategy has the lowest house edge of any major casino game: 0.44%, measured over 8 million simulated hands in July 2026. The craps Any 7 bet has the highest house edge of any mainstream casino bet: 16.67% — a 38-fold spread, and no bonus, system or streak moves a player’s expected cost as much as which of these bets is placed. For anyone unwilling to memorise a strategy chart, baccarat’s banker bet is the lowest-edge bet that requires no decisions: 1.04%, measured over 10 million simulated hands.

Updated August 2026. This page collects every major game’s edge in one place — ranked, translated into cost per $100 wagered, and, where we ran our own 44-million-bet simulation study, compared against what we actually measured. Every number links to the page where it comes from, and the methodology (fixed seeds, exact rules) is public.

House edge of every major casino game and bet, ranked

Rank	Game / bet	House edge	Cost per $100 wagered	Basis
1	Blackjack, basic strategy (8 decks, S17, DAS, 3:2)	0.44%	$0.44	Measured, 8M hands
2	Baccarat — banker (after 5% commission)	1.04%	$1.04	Measured, 10M hands (published ~1.06%)
3	Crypto-casino originals (Plinko, Wheel, Dice, Crash and similar)	~1%	~$1	Measured, 499M rounds (RTP 97.99–99.53%; crash: every cash-out target the same 1%)
4	Baccarat — player	1.26%	$1.26	Measured, 10M hands (published ~1.24%)
5	French roulette — even money with la partage	1.35%	$1.35	Analytic
6	Craps — don’t pass	1.36%	$1.36	Analytic
7	Craps — pass line	1.41%	$1.41	Analytic
8	European roulette — any bet	2.70%	$2.70	Analytic
9	Aviator (Spribe crash, published 97% RTP)	~3%	~$3	Measured, 452M rounds at the published edge
10	Online slots (typical published RTP 94–97%)	3–6%	$3–6	Published RTP
11	American roulette — any bet	5.26%	$5.26	Analytic
12	Blackjack — “mimic the dealer”	5.68%	$5.68	Measured, 1M hands
13	Blackjack — “never bust”	5.94%	$5.94	Measured, 1M hands
14	Baccarat — tie at 8:1	14.29%	$14.29	Measured, 10M hands (published ~14.36%)
15	Craps — Any 7	16.67%	$16.67	Analytic

The span is a factor of 38 between the best and worst rows. Nothing else you control at a casino — bonuses included — moves your expected cost as much as which bet you place.

The crypto-originals row was measured on Plinko and Wheel payout tables matched to Stake’s published values (24 million simulated rounds, RTP 97.99–99.53%) plus 475 million crash rounds at the standard 1% edge, where every cash-out target from 1.01x to 1000x cost the same 1%. The operator behind those payout tables is covered in our Stake review.

Measured vs published: the published maths held up

Every game we tested landed within normal sampling variance of its published house edge. Published figures still deserve independent checking, so we checked: our data study ran 44 million simulated bets in July 2026 with fixed seeds and exact published rules:

Game	Published	We measured	Sample
Baccarat banker	~1.06%	1.04%	10,000,000 hands
Baccarat player	~1.24%	1.26%	10,000,000 hands
Baccarat tie (8:1)	~14.36%	14.29%	10,000,000 hands
Plinko (all 9 configs)	~1% (RTP ≈ 99%)	0.97–2.01%	9,000,000 drops
Wheel (all 15 configs)	1.00% exactly	0.47–1.47%	15,000,000 spins
Blackjack, basic strategy	~0.43–0.45%	0.44%	8,000,000 hands
Crash (11 cash-out targets, 1.01x–1000x)	1.00% at every target	0.61–2.06% scatter around 1%	475,353,972 rounds

The visible wobble on high-variance configurations (Plinko high-risk, Wheel high-risk) is what extreme payout tables do to million-round samples — not a deviation from the maths.

Does strategy reduce the house edge? Only in blackjack

Strategy changes the house edge in exactly one mainstream game. Roulette, baccarat, slots, Plinko and Wheel have fixed odds: no system, progression or “due number” changes the expected loss. Blackjack is the exception, because the player makes decisions mid-hand — and the price of deciding badly is measurable:

How you play blackjack	House edge	Per $1,000 of bets
Perfect basic strategy	0.44%	$4.36
”Mimic the dealer”	5.68%	$56.78
”Never bust” (stand on hard 12+)	5.94%	$59.35

Blackjack played by feel costs roughly 13 times more than the same table played with basic strategy: 5.68–5.94% against 0.44%, measured over 10 million hands in July 2026. Note also that a 6:5 blackjack payout adds over a full percentage point to the house edge — a rule change that silently erases most of basic strategy’s benefit.

What is the typical house edge of online slots?

Most online slots carry a house edge of 3–6%, from published RTP of roughly 94–97% — several times the cost of any well-chosen table-game bet, and the reason slots sit in the bottom half of the ranked table. Crypto-casino originals such as Plinko, Wheel and Dice run near 1%.

RTP alone also says nothing about how long a bankroll survives. In our August 2026 study of 450,000 simulated sessions, three slot models at an identical 96% RTP produced median sessions of 2,315, 745 and 147 spins from $100 at $1 per spin — a 16x spread caused purely by volatility. The full distribution is in how long $100 lasts on slots, and the mechanics are in our RTP and volatility guide.

How often do the rare outcomes actually hit?

Long odds are abstract; measured counts are not. From the same July 2026 study:

• Plinko’s 1000× slot (high risk, 16 rows): 31 hits in 1,000,000 drops — one per 32,258 drops for either outer slot, matching the binomial 1-in-65,536 per side. At one drop per second, that is about nine hours per hit.
• Wheel jackpots: every high-risk jackpot landed within 0.5% of its theoretical 1-in-N frequency across 5 million high-risk spins. No segment was ever “due”.
• A dealt blackjack natural: 4.743% of 8-deck hands (theory: 4.745%) — about one hand in 21.
• Baccarat ties: 9.52% of hands, yet the 8:1 payout still leaves a 14.29% edge — the worst mainstream bet in the casino short of craps props.

Do betting systems or bonuses change the house edge?

No betting system changes the house edge, and most bonuses do not overcome the house edge either. In our August 2026 study of 400,000 simulated sessions, Martingale, D’Alembert, Fibonacci and flat betting each lost between 2.68% and 2.72% of everything wagered on European roulette — the game’s 2.70% edge, unchanged by the staking pattern. The full distributions, including why progressions feel like they work, are in the betting-systems study.

Bonuses interact with these edges in a way the headline offer hides: at 40x wagering the same bonus is a 30.8% loss on 4%-edge slots and a 22.8% gain on a 1%-edge even-money game, and only 16.16% of claimants cleared the 40x slot requirement at all — measured across 1.3 million simulated claims in the bonus study.

Some operators close that low-edge route in the terms. Shuffle’s help centre publishes the rollover formula “Wager Amount × (Game Edge / 0.04) = Rollover Progress”, which makes the expected cost of clearing identical at any house edge — we worked five operators’ published terms through in the bonus-terms comparison. To price a specific offer against the edges in the table above, the bonus value calculator runs the same expected-value arithmetic on terms you enter.

For high-volume players, the operator side of this decision — reward structures, bet caps, verification thresholds, all on documented terms — is compared in the high-roller guide.

Using these statistics

Journalists and researchers are welcome to reuse any figure on this page with attribution and a link. Measured figures come from single fixed-seed runs, reported in full — no cherry-picking — and the methodology contains everything needed to reproduce them: seeds, rules, payout tables and sample sizes.

For players, the practical reading order is: pick the game from the top of the ranked table, learn the one strategy that matters if it’s blackjack, treat bonuses as discounts with conditions rather than free money, and understand the house edge itself so no streak — hot or cold — surprises you. Play only what you can afford to lose, where it is legal for you.