The popularity of online casino apps has been steadily growing in recent years. The best online casino sites deliver the thrill and excitement of playing your favorite table games and slots right from the comfort of your own home on a computer or mobile device.
With so many different options available, it is important to understand which casino games give you the best odds to win and what skill level is required to play them optimally.
Check out the rest of this guide, where we provide a comprehensive breakdown of each type of casino game, the odds attached to them, and much more.
More on What Are the Casino Games With the Best Odds?
This guide will cover the house edge on all of the most popular casino games to help you decide which ones to play while keeping both entertainment and bankroll preservation in mind.
House Edge Explained
The house edge, also known as the house advantage, is the statistical advantage that the casino holds over a player in any given game due to the rules of that game. House edge is usually expressed as a percentage, which indicates the average amount of each bet that the casino expects to win in the long run.
For example, American roulette has a house edge of 5.26%, meaning that for every $100 a player wagers, the casino can project a return of $5.26 in the long run. Some players will win money and others will lose money in one night. But as the famous saying goes, “the house always wins” over time.
Some games, like slot machines and roulette, are influenced entirely by luck and have a flat house edge regardless of how you play. Table games like craps and the big six wheel have many different betting options available that each have different house odds.
And at the blackjack table, your skill level will have a direct impact on the house’s edge, with an average player expected to lose more in the long run than a player utilizing blackjack basic strategy.
Understanding the odds and strategies of each game before you start betting will allow you to maximize your chances of winning.
Casino Games with the Best Odds
Slot machines are among the most popular casino games in Las Vegas and around the world due to their simplicity. Playing slots doesn’t require any skill, and every spin delivers a new opportunity to win money. Slots are a fun way to pass the time whether you play them online or in person.
With that said, players looking for the best odds may want to make their way to the blackjack table instead. Blackjack and other table games tend to offer better odds that slot machines do, especially when played optimally.
Here’s a look at five casino games with the best odds available to the player.
Video Poker
Video poker offers some of the best odds of any game you will find in the casino.
Standard Jacks or Better, the most common variation of video poker, has a house edge of just 0.46% at both brick-and-mortar and real money online casinos when played optimally. Optimal strategy involves knowing what cards to hold in each situation to give yourself the best chances of drawing to the most profitable five-card poker hand.
In addition to optimal strategy, the variant of video poker game you are playing will also impact your winning odds.
For example, Deuces Wild has a 0.63% house edge with perfect play, and the edge on Double Double Bonus Poker climbs up to 1.02% for the casino. While Jacks or Better offers the best odds, some players favor the added excitement of higher-variance versions of video poker that deliver more chances to win big on each hand.
Blackjack
Blackjack odds vary quite a bit depending on the rules of the blackjack game you are playing in.
The standard version of blackjack you’ll find at most real money gambling apps has a house edge on perfect play of around 0.73%, with blackjack paying 3:2 and double downs allowed on any two cards. Las Vegas has tables on the strip in which blackjack offers a 6:5 payout, bumping the casino edge up to almost 2% with that one rule change alone.
You can significantly lower the house’s edge and improve your own chances of winning by mastering blackjack basic strategy. This involves knowing when to stand, hit, double down or split based on your holding and the dealer face card.
Contrary to popular belief, the actions of other players at the table do not impact your odds of winning. Sub-optimal plays they make are just as likely to help you win as they are to make you lose in the long run.
If you prefer to play without other players, online casino blackjack allows you to have the digital table to yourself every time. Just keep in mind that the worst blackjack odds available are the ones offered on bonus bets like Perfect Pair and Progressive Blackjack. These bonuses can pay off big when they hit, but those winnings will be offset by all the times you lose on them.
Craps
When you walk through the casino floor in Las Vegas and hear a table full of people cheering and celebrating with other players, there’s a good chance that commotion is coming from the craps table.
Craps is a dice game in which the shooter rolls the dice to set a point, and then must try to hit the point again before “crapping out” but rolling a seven.
Bets on the pass line and don’t pass line in craps are arguably the best bet offered in any table game. Your original pass line bet has a fairly low casino edge of 1.41%. But once the point is set, you are allowed to back that bet up with an even money 1:1 wager that pays the true odds of the point being hit. Also, that the point doesn’t hit if you are backing up the don’t pass line.
Winning and losing in the short term will come down to the luck of the dice, but your backed up bets on the pass line will break even in the long run.
In addition to the pass line and don’t pass line, the craps table has many additional bets available that all have different house edges. These side bets all lower the player’s edge, especially hardways four (two twos) and ten (two fives), which pay 7:1 despite having true odds of 8:1. That works out to a massive 11.1% casino edge.
Baccarat
Baccarat is a simple card game that doesn’t require any strategy.
Players at baccarat tables simply wager on the Banker or the Player, and then the cards are dealt. Whichever side winds up finishing closer to nine is the winner. And no matter which side you choose, you’ll be paying a small house edge on each hand dealt of only 1.06% on the Banker side and 1.24% on the Player side.
While pure advantage baccarat players stick to betting on the Banker due to the slightly better odds, the difference is negligible enough that many players will alternate their bets based on hunches. The only bad bet you can make at the baccarat table is on tie, which generally has a whopping casino edge of 14.36%.
Pai Gow Poker
Pai Gow Poker is a table game in which the players and the dealer are dealt seven cards and must use those cards to make the best five-card and two-card hands that they can.
What makes this game unique from others on this list is the high probability of pushes. Your two-card and five-card hand must both beat the dealer to win, and the dealer’s two hands must beat yours to lose. Roughly one third of the time, the hand ends in a push with the dealer and player each winning one of the two hands.
The casino edge on Pai Gow generally ranges between 1.60% and and 2.75% depending on the rules of the variant and what house way the dealer uses to set their hand. Bonus side bets like the fortune bonus that pay out on five-card hands like straights or better carry a much higher advantage for the house of around 8%.
French and European Roulette
What separates French and European Roulette from American Roulette is that there is only one zero on the wheel instead of two. This dynamic creates a flat house edge of only 2.70%, which represents the one in every 37 spins that the wheel lands on the game’s single zero.
Like baccarat, roulette is another game of pure luck with no player strategy required.
Roulette gives gamblers the chance to play with as much or little variance as they like while keeping the exact same casino edge on every spin. Low-variance plays like Black or Red and Odd or Even pay even money and have an expected value just slightly below that with 18 out of 37 potential winning numbers.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, a high-variance single-number bet pays 35 to 1, just slightly below the true expected value of 36 to 1.
Casino Games with the Worst Odds
Slot machines often come up in conversations about casino games with the worst odds, but it’s actually difficult to pinpoint the exact odds on brick-and-mortar casino slots as they vary from machine to machine.
We’ll cover that in more detail in the next section, but first, let’s cover some popular games that have consistently unfavorable odds against the player.
American Roulette and Triple Zero Roulette
The roulette dealer at most retail casinos in the United States spins a standard American Roulette wheel with two zeros instead of the one offered in the French and European variants. This doubles the house edge on every wheel spin to 5.26%.
And to make matters even worse, many in-person casinos have even started rolling Triple Zero Roulette, bumping the casino’s edge up to a staggering 7.69% on every spin. Roulette is a game players are much better off enjoying at online casinos these days, where single-zero variations are still readily available.
Big Six Wheel
The Big Six Wheel is a game that immediately draws your eye on the casino floor with its massive Wheel of Fortune style wheel. Players can bet on the wheel landing on “1” for an even money payout, “2” for a 2:1 payout, “5” for a 5:1 payout and so on with “10”, “20”, and two logo spots that usually pay 40:1 or 45:1.
No skill is involved as winning simply boils down to picking the right number correctly. The problem with this game is that winning on any given number is far more difficult than the odds paid would indicate.
For example, there are 24 “1” slots on the wheel out of 54 total slots, giving you winning chances of just 44.44% for a house edge of 11.11%. The house is an even bigger winner on all of the other numbers with a built in advantage to the casino of 16-24% on every other bet.
Keno
No discussion about casino games with the worst odds is complete without talking about Keno. The odds on this game vary depending on the rule variants and the amount of numbers selected, but the game’s massive 80-number board makes it difficult to win.
With a casino edge that ranges between 4.5-10% on electronic keno and 20-35% on live keno, this game offers some of the worst bets in the casino.
Fortunately, the odds on keno and bingo games played at online casino sites are displayed within the game and can be found with a site edge of under 5%. As is the case with roulette, keno is a game bettors should try to only play online.
Slot Odds Explained
It’s easy to research the odds of winning on any given table game or dice game because these games have clear statistics-based outcomes.
For example, there are four different cards with a value of 10 in blackjack (the ten, jack, queen, and king) out of 13 total card values ace through king.
So if the dealer is showing a 10, we can deduce that there is a high likelihood that their hidden hole card is also a ten, and use blackjack basic strategy to hit most of our holdings hoping to improve our hand.
The odds on slots are far less obvious to predict.
Slot machines work on a random number generator that is constantly shuffling through thousands of potential outcomes. Luck plays a huge role in your odds of winning as the result of your spin isn’t determined until the exact moment you hit the button or pull the lever.
The difference between winning or losing can be a fraction of a second.
Retail slots are each programmed with a return to player (RTP) rate that is not displayed to the player. Some slots have RTPs of as low as 80-85%, meaning you can expect to lose $0.15-.$0.20 on every dollar you wager.
On the flip side, some slots have RTPs as high as 95-98%. You can try to make an educated guess on what slot machine to play that may have the best odds based on stakes or location on the floor, but you can never know your true odds.
Fortunately, this isn’t the case with online slots. Most casinos display the RTP on each of their games, allowing you to find machines with better odds of winning. Online slots generally have a return to player of around 93-98%.
Online Casinos Explained
Online casino sites allow you to play digital versions of all of your favorite games from slots to craps to blackjack. Most of these sites include their own variations of ever popular slot machines like Buffalo and Wheel of Fortune that tend to have good odds of winning when compared to their in-person counterparts.
Nothing compares to the first roll of the dice at the craps table or squeezing the cards to reveal your hand at baccarat tables, but if you favor the look and feel of a real table game to a digital one, you may enjoy live dealer casino games.
Live dealer table game versions of popular games like blackjack and craps let you place your bets digitally and then watch an actual dealer deal the cards, spin the wheel or roll the dice on a live feed.
Popular brands with online casino sites and apps include:
- BetMGM
- Caesars
- DraftKings Casino
- FanDuel Casino
Social Casinos
Social casino sites are gaming sites that allow players to play online slots and table games with free-to-play currency or sweepstakes coins that represent real money.
The rules on how these sites work can be confusing, but in a nutshell, players can buy free-to-play coins with real money that comes in a package that include “free” sweepstakes coins. When you play a table game or slot with sweeps coins and win, you can redeem these coins for cash prizes.
These social casino websites have found a way to offer gambling to players across the United States legally by working within existing laws on sweepstakes. No purchase is necessary to play as small amounts of sweepstakes coins can be collected each day simply by logging in to your account.
Top social casino sites include:
Responsible Gambling
Gambling can be a fun and entertaining hobby when enjoyed responsibly. Responsible gambling includes setting healthy limits on the amount of money you bet each month and only playing with money that you can comfortably afford to lose.
If you feel that you are no longer in control and may be struggling with gambling addiction, don’t hesitate to reach out for help at one of these organizations:
Casino Game Odds FAQs
In this section, we’ll cover some of the most frequently asked questions about casino games with the best odds to provide you with plenty of important information.
Which casino game has highest odds of winning?
Video poker played optimally generates an expected player return of 99.54% of their investment, making it the game with the highest odds of winning overall. The only game that offers better odds in any circumstances is craps, which allows you to back up your bets on the pass line or don’t pass line at true odds with no casino edge.
What is the easiest casino game?
There are many casino games that are very easy to play as they require no strategy and have outcomes based purely on luck. Games of this type include slots, roulette, baccarat, keno, and the Big Six Wheel.
What is the best casino game to win consistently?
Every game has odds tilted in the casino’s favor, which means that you will need luck on your side to win. Sticking to games with the highest player odds like video poker, blackjack, craps and baccarat will increase your chances of winning in any given session.
What casino game has the best payout?
Standard video poker has the best payout long-term with an expected return to the player of 99.54% on play with perfect strategy. In regards to the highest potential payout, games with progressive jackpots can sometimes pay out massive wins of six or even seven figures.
What game has the worst odds of winning in a casino?
Live keno. Electronic versions of the game found in-person and online have a casino edge of 4.5-10%, but that edge climbs to 25-40% in live drawn games.
Which slot machine is most likely to win?
Most casinos online list the expected return on their slot machines, so you can actually take the time to compare games and find the ones with the best player edge. There is no way to determine this on in-person slot machines, though high-limit slots are generally programmed to pay out more often.
What are long and short odds?
Long odds refer to wagers with a low probability of winning and a high potential payout. Conversely, short odds have good odds of winning with a low potential payout.
