Games
Casino Table Games: House Edge by Bet
Roulette, baccarat, craps, and sic bo have no strategy to learn in the blackjack sense — you cannot improve a bet by playing it well. What you can change is which bet you place, and at these tables the distance between the best and the worst bet is far greater than the distance between the games themselves.
Written by the Moes Almanac editorial team
1.06%
The worst bet covered here, any seven in craps, takes 16.67%. Same casino, same evening, more than fifteen times the cost.
You cannot play these games well. You can only choose them well.
How to read the numbers
House edge is the share of each wager the casino expects to keep, averaged over a very large number of bets. An edge of 1.06% means an expected loss of about one unit per hundred wagered — not per session, and not in any pattern you will be able to see while playing.
These figures are fixed properties of the bets themselves, computed from the payout and the probability. No betting system, progression, or reading of streaks alters them, because none of those things changes what an individual bet pays or how often it wins.
Every bet, ranked
| Bet | House edge |
|---|---|
| Baccarat — banker After the 5% commission | 1.06% |
| Baccarat — player | 1.24% |
| Roulette — even money, French rules with la partage Half the stake returned when zero hits | 1.35% |
| Craps — don't pass | 1.36% |
| Craps — pass line | 1.41% |
| Roulette — European, single zero | 2.70% |
| Sic bo — big or small | 2.78% |
| Roulette — American, double zero Same game, one extra pocket | 5.26% |
| Roulette — five-number bet, American wheel | 7.89% |
| Baccarat — tie, paying 8:1 | 14.36% |
| Sic bo — specific triple, paying 180:1 True odds are 215:1 | 16.20% |
| Craps — any seven | 16.67% |
Frequently asked questions
- Which casino table game has the lowest house edge?
- Among these games, the banker bet in baccarat at 1.06% and the don't pass bet in craps at 1.36% are the lowest standing bets. Craps free odds are lower still at zero house edge, but they can only be added behind a pass or don't pass bet and never placed on their own.
- Does a betting system reduce the house edge?
- No. Systems such as the Martingale change the shape of your wins and losses but not their average. House edge is a property of each individual bet, and combining bets — in any order and at any stake — cannot produce a total with a better expectation than the bets it is made of.
- Why do these games have no strategy when blackjack does?
- Because in blackjack and video poker the player makes decisions that change the outcome — whether to draw, to split, which cards to hold. At these tables the only decision is which bet to place, and after that the rules run themselves. Choosing well still matters; it simply happens before the round rather than during it.
- Is the cheapest bet always the best one to make?
- Cheapest means it loses least on average, which is the only sense in which one bet beats another here. It does not mean it wins most often. A single-number roulette bet and an even-money one both cost 2.7% on a European wheel but scatter results very differently, so cost and volatility are separate choices — and only cost can be ranked.