House Advantage

Which games does the house have the lowest and highest advantage

It depends, since so many games have different bets you can make, with wildly varying house edges.

A good blackjack game usually has a very low house edge of under 1% if played correctly, and of course certain strategies (including counting) can actually make it a game advantageous to the player. The same is true for certain video poker machines. However, there are plenty of blackjack tables and video poker machines with bad rules/payout tables that offer the house a much higher advantage, so you have to look around.

I think the game with the lowest house edge that requires no skill to play is craps, where the "Don't Pass" bet offers a house edge of only 1.36%. If you lay odds, you can get the total house edge (on the combined line bet and odds) to just 0.27% assuming normal 3-4-5x odds. But if you start taking the other bets in the middle, you will be facing anywhere from a 5% to a 17% house advantage, so be careful.

As for biggest house edge, I think the safe pick is keno, which may offer house edges of greater than 20%. But there are a lot of crazy carnival games with terrible rules, so I don't know what the single worst bet is. Try checking out the Wizard's games page at https://wizardofodds.com/games/ for the house edge on most bets.

Quote: boomdog

Which games does the house have the lowest and highest advantage

House advantage has a technical definition and can be worked out for specific bets and averaged out for specific games.
I've become enamored of the concept of making a distinction between what I call the nominal house advantage and a more realistic house advantage.

If you consider a player's knowledge, alcohol consumption, distractions of beautiful young ladies passing by and offering you drinks, conversations of dealers and floormen, etc. you arrive at a more realistic figure than the nominal house advantage.

Ofcourse a player's fatigue and will-power also play a role. So avoiding Keno with its 22 percent house advantage is always a good rule. I don't know if avoiding Cleopatra's Keno with its 10 percent house edge is a good practice or not. Its a question of preferences and study-time.

A nominal house edge may exist, but the casino loves to snag passersby into some new game. If you are not familiar with all the rules and familiar with the proper strategy for that game, then the nominal house edge will not apply to you. You will be subject to a some sort of higher house edge.

In my younger and more ignorant days, I played Keno. Now, I would be ashamed to be seen entering a Keno Lounge. Yet, some real gamblers still play it.

Keno usually has a minimum house edge of 25% for pick 1. It goes down from there, although it usually doesn't get any worse than 35%. When you start running into payout limits the house edge goes up, but the odds of you catching are so small that it doesn't affect things too much.

Quote: stephen

I think the game with the lowest house edge that requires no skill to play is craps, where the "Don't Pass" bet offers a house edge of only 1.36%. If you lay odds, you can get the total house edge (on the combined line bet and odds) to just 0.27% assuming normal 3-4-5x odds. But if you start taking the other bets in the middle, you will be facing anywhere from a 5% to a 17% house advantage, so be careful.

The Banker bet in Baccarat is slightly better at 1.06%. The Player bet is also 1.24%.

But we are so close as to be splitting hairs here. Incidentally, I wonder why so many "pooh-pooh" Baccarat when it has such a low house edge and no skill required. I've heard people say it's boring. Personally, low-limit Baccarat is my favorite game to play.

Quote: teddys

The Banker bet in Baccarat is slightly better at 1.06%. The Player bet is also 1.24%.

But we are so close as to be splitting hairs here. Incidentally, I wonder why so many "pooh-pooh" Baccarat when it has such a low house edge and no skill required. I've heard people say it's boring. Personally, low-limit Baccarat is my favorite game to play.

The variance is limited compared to Craps taking the free odds. To me this would mean making a few large bets in Baccarat, to try to get lucky. In Craps, I like to see what will happen with more of a session.

I like the ultra-low variance. Very relaxing :)

If you're looking for low variance, try Pai Gow poker where you tie 41.5% of the time, lose 30% and win 28.5% of time (with a 5% commission) payable on wins. The game plays really slow as well (about 30 hands per hour on a full table)... at a $15 table, you could expect to lose about $12/hour.

I like pai gow. However, nothing beats $10/hand bacc where I can play every fourth or fifth hand or so. Couple bucks expected loss :)

Deuces Wild Video poker with perfect play, the full pay paytable and perfect play has 0.8% player advantage. The pay table has to look like the following for one coin and it must also pay 4000 for five coins.

Natural Royal Flush 300
Four Deuces 200
Wild Royal Flush 25
Five of a Kind 15
Straight Flush 9
Four of a Kind 5
Full House 3
Flush 2
Straight 2
Three of a Kind 1

The lowest house edge for a game of chance is no pass line bet in craps with large free odds. As a promitional value there are two casinos in Vegas the permit 100X free odds. Casino Royale on the strip and Eastside Cannery on Boulder Strip. [lin=http://www.eastsidecannery.com/] Eastside Cannery permits 100X on $3 minimum while Casino Royale now requires $5 minimum. But a few places like Stratosphere and Main Street Casino in downtown permit 20X odds with minimum of $5 which has a house edge of 0.1% which is better than blackjack (without counting cards).

I think the one thing that people forget about counting cards besides the difficulty of being able to do it well is that it requires a very large bankroll. A lot of people like motel clerks tell me they can count cards, but I doubt they have the bankroll to actually play the game properly.

Quote: teddys

I wonder why so many "pooh-pooh" Baccarat when it has such a low house edge and no skill required.

I think you answered your own question.

It's no better than slots as far as skill goes. At least with slots, there's a chance at a jackpot.

And low house edge? Personally, I think the average person either doesn't care or doesn't know enough to care.

Of course, the other thing could be that the average person doesn't realize that there is no skill involved. With so many Asians at the table, furiously scribbling notes after each hand (not to mention that the casinos eagerly provide the note pads and pencils), it becomes intimidating - particularly to those that aren't good in math but buy in to the stereotype that Asians ARE good in math.