Casino Glossary

Definitions for the terms that appear across these guides, each written to stand on its own. Where a term carries a number — a house edge, a return, a payout — the number is part of the definition, because it is usually the part that matters.

Written by the Moes Almanac editorial team Last reviewed 13 August 2026

Currently 27 terms, in alphabetical order.

Banker bet: The bet in baccarat on the banker hand, which wins slightly more often than the player hand. It carries a house edge of 1.06% after the standard 5% commission on wins, making it the lowest standing bet available at a casino table. More on this
Bankroll: The total amount of money set aside for gambling, kept separate from money needed for anything else. A bankroll is a limit rather than a target: its purpose is to make the largest possible loss a decision taken in advance, not one taken while playing.
Basic strategy: The mathematically optimal action for every combination of a blackjack player's hand and the dealer's up card. It is not a winning system but the set of decisions that loses least, reducing the house edge from roughly 2.5% to about 0.5%. More on this
Card counting: Tracking the ratio of high to low cards left in the shoe to identify moments when the remaining deck favours the player. It is legal arithmetic rather than cheating, and it does not work online because the deck is shuffled after every round. More on this
Commission: The share a casino takes from a winning bet instead of building its margin into the payout. Baccarat's banker bet pays even money minus a 5% commission; without that commission the bet would favour the player rather than the house. More on this
Double down: Doubling your stake mid-hand in exchange for exactly one more card. Correct doubling produces a large share of basic strategy's value, because it puts additional money on the table only in the situations that already favour the player. More on this
Expected value: The average result of a bet if it were repeated indefinitely, expressed per unit wagered. An expected value of −0.0106 means an average loss of about one unit per hundred wagered, which is another way of stating a 1.06% house edge.
Free odds: An additional bet placed behind a pass or don't pass bet in craps, paid at true odds with no house edge at all. It is the only bet in a casino carrying a zero edge, and it cannot be placed on its own. More on this
Full pay: The highest-paying published version of a video poker game. Full-pay Jacks or Better is the 9/6 version returning 99.54%, and full-pay Deuces Wild returns 100.76%. Machines carrying reduced pay tables look identical and are far more common. More on this
Hard hand: A blackjack hand with no ace, or one in which counting an ace as eleven would exceed 21. Hard hands cannot absorb a high card without busting, which is why they are played more cautiously than soft hands of the same total. More on this
House edge: The share of each wager a casino expects to keep, averaged over a very large number of bets. It is a fixed property of a bet, computed from its payout and its probability, and no betting system or pattern of play alters it. More on this
Insurance: A side bet offered when the dealer shows an ace, paying 2:1 if the dealer's hole card is a ten. Despite the name it does not protect the original stake, and it carries a house edge of about 7.4% in a six-deck game. More on this
La partage: A French roulette rule returning half of an even-money stake when the ball lands on zero. It halves the house edge on those bets from 2.7% to 1.35%, making them the cheapest bets available on any roulette wheel. More on this
Maximum coins: Betting the full five coins on a video poker hand. A royal flush pays 250 per coin below five coins but 800 per coin at five, so playing short costs roughly 1.5 percentage points of return. More on this
Natural: An ace together with any ten-value card in the first two cards of a blackjack hand. It pays 3:2 at a fair table and 6:5 at a table worth avoiding; that single change adds about 1.39 percentage points to the house edge. More on this
Optical character recognition: The technology that reads physical cards and wheel results in a live dealer studio so the software can settle bets automatically. It is what connects a real table to an online interface without a human entering results by hand. More on this
Pay table: The published schedule of payouts for each winning hand on a video poker machine. It determines the game's return completely and is printed on the machine itself, which makes video poker the only casino game whose exact return can be read before playing. More on this
Proposition bet: A single-roll or novelty bet, usually in the middle of a craps layout, offering a large payout at odds far worse than true. Any seven pays 4:1 on a one-in-six outcome, which is a house edge of 16.67%. More on this
Push: A tie between player and dealer in which the original stake is returned and nothing is won or lost. A push is not a win; it simply removes that hand from the reckoning entirely. More on this
Random number generator: The certified software that produces outcomes in casino games without a physical dealer. A tested generator is audited by an independent laboratory, and its results are statistically indistinguishable from those of physical equipment. More on this
Return to player: The share of total wagers a game pays back over the long run, expressed as a percentage. It is the house edge stated from the other direction: a return of 99.54% is a house edge of 0.46%. More on this
Shoe: The dispenser holding the several decks a dealer draws from, typically four to eight in blackjack and six to eight in baccarat. More decks slightly raise the house edge and make card counting substantially less effective. More on this
Side bet: An optional wager placed alongside the main hand, such as Perfect Pairs or 21+3 in blackjack. Side bets are consistently far more expensive than the game they attach to, frequently by a factor of ten or more. More on this
Soft hand: A blackjack hand containing an ace counted as eleven without exceeding 21. A soft hand cannot bust on the next card, which is why basic strategy plays it more aggressively than a hard hand of the same total. More on this
Split: Separating a pair into two hands, each receiving a second card and carrying its own stake. Aces and eights are always split; fives and tens never are, because splitting them trades one strong hand for two weaker ones. More on this
Surrender: Forfeiting half the stake to end a blackjack hand before drawing. Where it is offered, late surrender lowers the house edge by roughly 0.08 percentage points, and it is correct on only a small number of clearly losing hands. More on this
Variance: How widely actual results scatter around their expected value in the short run. Variance is why a session can end far ahead or far behind regardless of the house edge, and why short sessions never resemble published return figures.