What is the house edge, and how does it differ by game?
The house edge is the share of each bet the casino expects to keep over the long run, and it is built into the payout odds rather than taken as a fee. Roulette shows the mechanism most cleanly. An American wheel has 38 pockets but pays a winning single number 35 to 1, and that gap is the entire edge: 2 divided by 38, or 5.263 percent. A European wheel has 37 pockets and pays the same 35 to 1, giving 1 divided by 37, or 2.703 percent. Same game, same bet, and the American version costs you roughly twice as much per spin purely because of one extra pocket. Across the common games the spread is wide: baccarat on the banker bet is about 1.06 percent, the craps pass line about 1.41 percent, and blackjack played with correct basic strategy can be near 0.5 percent, while American roulette sits at 5.263 percent. Choosing the game matters more than anything you do inside it.
It is not a fee, it is a rounding error in the payout odds. On an American wheel it is exactly one extra pocket.
The evidence
| Bet | House edge | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Blackjack, correct basic strategy | about 0.5 percent | Depends on the specific table rules; correct play is required to reach it |
| Baccarat, banker | about 1.06 percent | After the commission taken on winning banker bets |
| Craps, pass line | about 1.41 percent | Standard figure for the pass line bet |
| European roulette, single number | 2.703 percent | 1 divided by 37: pays 35 to 1 on a 37-pocket wheel |
| American roulette, single number | 5.263 percent | 2 divided by 38: pays 35 to 1 on a 38-pocket wheel |
How we know
The two roulette figures are derived, not looked up, and we verified them two ways: as an expected value over the payout odds, and as the shortcut of green pockets over total pockets. Both give 5.263 and 2.703 percent, so the numbers on this page are reproducible by anyone with a calculator, which is the standard we want for a page whose whole content is numbers. The blackjack, baccarat and craps figures are the standard published ones and we mark them "about" deliberately. Blackjack in particular is not one game: the edge moves with the number of decks, whether the dealer hits a soft 17, whether doubling after a split is allowed and what a blackjack pays, and a table paying 6 to 5 on a natural is a materially worse game than one paying 3 to 2. Anyone quoting a single blackjack number without naming the rules is quoting a game rather than the game in front of you. The practical consequence is the one worth taking away. The difference between the best and worst bets here is about a factor of ten, and it is settled before the first card or spin, by which table you sit at. No system played at the 5.263 percent game beats flat betting at the 0.5 percent one.