Casino Table Games Ranked by House Edge

Walk into any pit and the casino table games in front of you span an enormous range of value — from bets that cost you half a percent to bets that cost you fifteen. Knowing which is which is the single most profitable piece of casino knowledge you can carry, because it decides how fast your money disappears.

First, what “house edge” means here

The house edge is the percentage of each bet the casino expects to keep over the long run. A 1% edge means a $100 total wagered costs about $1 on average; a 5% edge costs $5. Same money on the table, five times the bleed. Here’s how the classic games stack up when you play them correctly.

The best bets (under ~1.5%)

• Blackjack — ~0.5%. With correct basic strategy, nothing on the floor is cheaper. The catch is you have to actually play the chart, and you must find 3:2 payouts (6:5 tables quietly triple the edge).
• Baccarat (Banker) — 1.06%. No skill required; just bet Banker every hand, pay the small commission, and ignore the Tie bet (a brutal ~14%).
• Craps (Pass / Don’t Pass) — 1.41% / 1.36%. The line bets are strong, and backing them with “odds” — a bet paid at true probability with zero house edge — drags your combined edge well below 1%.

The middle tier (~2–3.5%)

• Ultimate Texas Hold’em — ~2.2% on the ante. A genuinely skillful poker-based game; playing Ultimate Texas Hold’em well means betting the maximum 4x pre-flop with strong hands and checking correctly, which keeps the effective edge low.
• Pai Gow Poker — ~2.5%. Slow, low-variance, lots of pushes; a good bankroll-preservation game.
• Three Card Poker — ~3.4% on Ante-Play with correct Q-6-4 strategy.

The expensive tier (5%+)

• Roulette — 2.7% single-zero, 5.26% double-zero. Always seek the single-zero (European) wheel; the extra green pocket nearly doubles the cost.
• Caribbean Stud — ~5.2%. Fun, but the edge is steep.
• Big Six / Wheel of Fortune — 11%+. Avoid.

How to actually use this ranking

Two rules capture most of the value. First, skill games reward the effort — blackjack and UTH have the lowest edges precisely because your decisions matter, so they pay you back for learning them. Second, watch the pay-table and rule variations, because they can move the edge more than the base game does: a single-zero wheel, a 3:2 blackjack, backing craps with odds. Learn the base edges, then hunt the good versions, and you’ll get hours more play out of the same bankroll than the player one seat over who never checked.