The numbers
on the other side
- What the house sells
- time
- What it charges
- a percentage of every bet
- How it collects
- repetition
A casino does not need luck and does not need you to lose any particular hand. It needs volume. These tools show what that costs at the pace and stake you actually play.
What a session actually costs
House edge is a percentage of every dollar wagered, not of what you bring.
Note the decision rate. This is why slots take money faster than anything else.
Pays 8 to 1 on a 9.5 to 1 shot.
The worst common bet in a pit.
The one bet on an American table that is worse than the rest.
The second zero doubles the cost of playing.
The gap between this row and the first is what strategy is worth.
One payout change makes the best game on the floor a mediocre one.
Single zero. Every bet on the layout has the same edge.
A separate bet on whether the next card is a ten. It is not.
Slightly worse. No commission, slightly fewer wins.
Best bet in the game, commission included.
The best bet on the floor, and only if you play every hand correctly.
Included for scale: odds bets carry no house edge at all.
Note how far slots sit from everything else, and that the difference is not mainly the edge — it is the decision rate. Six hundred spins an hour turns a modest percentage into the fastest way to lose money in the building.
Risk of ruin
For a player with an edge. Without one, ruin is certain given enough hands.
A counting edge of about 1% with a 1-12 spread carries a standard deviation near 3.3 units a hand. Read the middle number: that is the bankroll the edge demands before it means anything.
At $25 units, 400 units is $10,000 sitting behind a 1% edge. This is the arithmetic that keeps card counting a job rather than a hobby.
- Blackjack, basic strategy
- Blackjack, counting with a 1-12 spread
- Baccarat, banker
- Roulette, even money
- Roulette, straight up
The streak you thought was impossible
Red or black, single-zero wheel
Streaks are not anomalies. They are what randomness looks like up close, and a table that has just produced one is exactly as likely to produce another as it was before.
The chance the next spin is black after 6 reds is 48.6% — the same number it was on every spin before, because the wheel has no memory of them.
Every betting system, every scorecard, and every hunch about a table being due rests on the belief that this sentence is false.