Did You Know the Casino Keeps 27% of Every Dollar on Keno? Here's What Every Game Actually Costs You

Hey everyone 👋

Something I've been thinking about lately and wanted to share with the community here.

Most of us pick casino games based on how fun they look or which ones have the biggest jackpots advertised. I did the same thing for years. Then I started actually looking at house edge numbers and it completely changed how I approach sessions.

For anyone who hasn't gone deep on this before — the house edge is the percentage of every bet the casino mathematically expects to keep over time. Not per session, but across thousands of rounds. It's basically the price tag on every game.

Here's what genuinely surprised me when I started comparing them properly 👇

The games with the BEST odds (lowest house edge)

🃏 Video Poker with optimal strategy — 0.46% 🃏 Blackjack with basic strategy — 0.50% 🎴 Baccarat Banker bet — 1.06% 🎡 French Roulette with La Partage — 1.35% 🎲 Craps Pass Line — 1.41%

The games with the WORST odds (highest house edge)

🎰 Slots average — 4% to 8% 🎯 Keno — 25% to 27% 🎡 American Roulette — 5.26% vs European at 2.70%

That Keno number really got me. The casino keeps over a quarter of every dollar wagered on Keno across the long run. Meanwhile Blackjack with basic strategy costs less than half a cent per dollar bet.

Same casino. Same night. Completely different mathematics.

A few things that genuinely changed how I play after going through all of this 👇

1 — American vs European Roulette is a no-brainer I never play American Roulette anymore. The double zero pocket adds nearly 2.6% to the house edge for zero extra entertainment value. European or French every time.

2 — Baccarat is criminally underrated Nobody talks about it but the Banker bet at 1.06% is genuinely one of the best bets in any casino. No skill needed. Just bet Banker and accept the 5% commission on wins.

3 — The Tie bet in Baccarat is a trap 14.36% house edge sitting right next to a 1.06% bet. Same table. Same game. Wildly different math.

4 — Betting systems don't change any of this Martingale, Fibonacci, D'Alembert — none of them change the underlying house edge on any game. They just redistribute wins and losses differently. The math stays the same.

We put together a full breakdown of every major casino game with a ranked chart and detailed tables over on SlotsMansion — covers everything from the exact impact of rule variations on Blackjack odds to why full-pay Video Poker machines are so much better than short-pay ones.

Curious what the community thinks about this.

A few questions to kick things off:

Do you factor in house edge when choosing which games to play? Or do you pick based on other factors?

Has anyone here made a deliberate switch from high-edge to low-edge games and noticed a real difference in how long their sessions last?

And for the Blackjack players — do you use a basic strategy card at the table or have you got it memorised at this point?

Drop your thoughts below — always good to hear how different players approach this stuff.

Posted by SlotsMansion |What Is the House Edge?