Casino Games Odds

1. Casino Games Odds Of Winning
2. Casino Game Odds Comparison

Does roulette offer good odds? With a House Edge From 2% Roulette is a traditional game seeping. To summarize it all, gambling odds represent the likelihood of an event happening and allow you to calculate how much money you can potentially win if you bet correctly. As an example, with odds of 6/1, for every $1 you bet, you will win $6. You have a 14.28% chance of this happening, calculated by 1 / (6 + 1) = 0.1428.

Of all the ways to lose money in life, gambling is probably the most enjoyable (at least up to a certain point).

When you walk through the doors of a casino, you do so knowing your net worth is probably going to be lower by the time you emerge back into the blinding sunlight, but at least you can get a few free drinks for your troubles.

Casino Games Odds Of Winning

However, if you want to maximize the number of watered down adult beverages you receive while gambling, it’s important to know which games to play in order to ensure you don’t burn through your funds any quicker than necessary.

In order to do that, you need the answer to one simple question: Which casino games have the best odds?

Here’s everything you need to know.

Games of Chance vs. Games of Skill

Casino games are a lot like cryptocurrencies: you have plenty of options when it comes to taking a risk with your money but there are certain ways to gain an edge if you actually know what you’re doing.

If you don’t want to rely on a computer algorithm, a rolling ball, or a random person tumbling dice, there are a few other places where you might feel right at home.

For the purpose of this article, I’m going to assume you aren’t Rain Man or someone who enjoys the adrenaline rush that comes with knowing you could be hauled into a backroom at any minute if you get caught counting cards.

If either of those labels apply to you, then I doubt you need much advice in the first place.

Which Games Have The Worst Odds?

Before we address the best casino games to win money we should also examine the ones that rip you off the most.

Odds can vary from casino to casino and many of them actually have guides that can tell you which games will give you the best return on your investment. However, they’re a bit less likely to advertise which games are designed to screw you over more than others.

I’m more than happy to take on that burden.

3. Slots

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I know it can be tough to resist the urge of the flashing lights and the alluring gaze of Carrie Bradshaw radiating from The Sex and the City slot machine but you’re doing yourself a severe disservice if you don’t have the self-control required to not sit down.

Slot machines are great because you can sit there for hours on end while establishing a camaraderie with the person bringing you drinks, which the casino is more than happy to provide you with because you’re basically printing money for them.

Odds vary from machine to machine, but one analysis says the house edge can be upwards of 15%. That number will shrink as you play machines with larger betting amounts, but if you’re a penny slots diehard, you might want to rethink your fandom.

2. The Wheel Of Fortune

There’s a pretty small chance you’re ever going to find yourself standing next to Pat Sajak on a set in Los Angeles, so for most people, this game is the closest they’ll ever get to actually playing Wheel of Fortune.

However, unlike actual Wheel of Fortune contestants, you don’t get to walk away with a food dehydrator or a new set of flatware if you lose— and there’s a very good chance you’re going to.

If you’re brave enough to bet on higher amounts, you should do so knowing the casino has up to a 25% house edge. You’ll honestly probably have better luck if you just audition for the show.

1. Keno

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I’m not sure why anyone would play Keno at a casino when you can just go to a sketchy bar or a bowling alley— not to mention that it’s just an objectively boring (and entirely random) game.

You can spice things up a bit if you want to play glorified bingo surrounded by AARP members instead of staring at a screen but you’re not doing yourself any favors either way. Opting for the former comes with a house advantage of up to 16% but that number can balloon to 30% when it comes to the virtual version.

Thankfully, there are more than a few other games you can hit up for the best odds in the casino.

Which Casino Games Have The Best Odds?

4. Roulette

When you consider roulette gives players the chance to basically bet on a coin flip, you’d think it would be one of the best games on the casino floor.

However, the inclusion of the green 0 and 00 actually gives the house a bigger advantage than you’d think. Unlike some other games, the odds never change, which means a casino will statistically have a 5.26% house edge.

There are a variety of different betting strategies that can theoretically increase your odds but there’s still a very good chance you’ll end up losing money in the long run even if you use them.

3. Craps

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There are a million different ways to bet on craps but if you’re new to the game you’re probably just going to want to bet on the Pass Line and yell “Seven!” a lot.

If you choose to adopt that strategy then the casino is looking at a house edge of 1.41%. Sadly, there’s no solid data on whether or not blowing on the dice before a roll impacts that number.

Casino Game Odds Comparison

2. Blackjack

You may not have perfected the art of card counting at MIT but blackjack is still one of the best bets you can make at a casino.

Even if you’ve never played a single game of blackjack in your life you still have a pretty good chance of coming away with a winning hand as long as you know how to do simple addition.

If you did, in fact, go to elementary school, the house only has a .5% edge whenever the cards are dealt.

1. Video Poker

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Sure, video poker might not be as exciting as facing off against a guy rocking sunglasses inside with a pair of Beats over a pulled-up hoodie, but at least you don’t have to deal with the blow to your psyche if you end up losing to him.

If you can track down a Jacks or Better machine, you’re in a position to rake in more money than anywhere else in the casino.

Technically speaking, an inexperienced video poker player has the same shot at winning as a blackjack player does but there are a number of proven strategies that (if applied correctly) result in the house only having an advantage of .46%.

However, an expert at Deuces or Wild can theoretically gain a .7% edge on the casino, so if you happen to have some time on your hands, you might want to start studying up.

Casino and gambling can be a lot of fun, especially when players do not understand the mathematics behind it, but being aware of these matters would offer players more fundamental understanding of the way probabilities and odds work.

Odds and probabilities are some of the most important aspects of gambling mathematics. They could be related even to the pay-off of a certain game. For example, there is an even money situation when it is explained that a bet pays off at the same odds as the probability of winning the bet.

Probabilities

Probabilities are often described as the very backbone of gambling mathematics.

Informally, probability is understood as the chance or the likelihood that a certain event will happen. It is also considered to be an estimate of the corresponding average frequency that is applied for a certain event to occur in a series of independent trials that have been repeated.

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The relative frequency of an event is somewhere between the probability of the event never to occur or always to occur, which basically means that it is always between 0% and 100%. Knowing how to use the probability would provide casino players with the opportunity to predict the eventual occurrence of an event. Unfortunately, it would not give them the chance to predict the exact moment when the event is to occur.

In addition, probability in gambling mathematics can be used when determining the conditions for acquiring certain results or even some financial expectations of a game in particular in the long term. Probabilities could also be helpful when determining how favourable a certain game would be and is it worth playing. This aspect of the matter is usually expressed as odds, as well as a fraction or a decimal fraction. Still, casino players should be aware of the fact that odds and probabilities are different things.

The estimate of the likelihood of a player winning divided by the total amount of available chances is called probability. The latter is also an ordinary fraction that can be expressed as a proportion between 0 and 1, or as a percentage.

What casino players should understand first is the formal theory of probability and are recommended to start with the term that is known as the “sample space”. It may sound somehow strange, but as a matter of fact, this is purely a description of all outcomes possible, or other words – of everything that can possibly happen. It is quite normal for sample spaces to be very large when it comes to casino games. As a matter of fact, they simply reflect the idea that too many things could actually happen to count them all.

The sample space is something that may occur in a large number of experiments and can normally be understood easily when considering the nature of the experiment. Still, the sample space does not have to be described in a explicit way.

Players will need be aware of some details in order to calculate the probability of a certain event. First, they will need a full count of the number of individual elements in the sample space. In addition, they will need to know the number of the individual elements related to the event. Once a player knows these values, they will be able to define the probability of the event by using the equation:

P(event) = Size of event / Size of the sample space

As shown in the equation, the letter P is used as a substitute of the word “probability”. What is not so evident by the above-mentioned equation is how the player should count the size of a variety of collections. Unfortunately, the counting problems in the gambling industry can be too complex. Of course, probabilities can be quickly calculated when counting is easy.

Odds

The most general definition of odds is the probability of a certain event happening in comparison to the probability of the same event not happening.

Odds are considered as ratios of the player's chances of losing to the likelihood of winning. In other words, they are the average frequency of a player's eventual loss to the average frequency of a win. As already mentioned above, odds are often mistaken with probabilities, but they are not the same thing.

As a matter of fact, odds almost never mean the actual likelihood of generating a win when it comes to gambling. In most cases, the term is used as a reference to a subjective estimate of the odds, and not as an exact mathematical calculation.

For example, if a player owns 1 of a total of 4 tickets, their probability to win is 1 in 4. Their odds, on the other hand, are 3 to 1. In order for a player to convert odds to probability, they need to take the likelihood for them to win, then use it as the numerator and divide by the total number of chances, including the ones for both winning and losing.

For example, let us take that the odds are 4 to 1. Then, the probability would be found by using the following equation:

1 / (1+4) = 1/5

In other words, the probability in this case would equal to 1/5, or 20%. What players need to know is the fact that the so-called “evens” are odds of 1 to 1. They are always paid even money.

The term “odds” could also be used as a substitute of the true odds that are the actual chances of winning. There are also payout odds, which represent the ratio of payout for each unit bet.

Just like probabilities, odds can also be expressed as a ratio of two numbers. The first number comes to represent the expected frequency of the occurrence of a specific outcome, and this is actually exactly what probabilities are. The second number, however, represents only the number of the rest of the possible outcomes. In comparison to probabilities, which could be expressed as percentages, odds are always displayed as ratios.