New players to online gambling or playing games at the casino should take a bit of time to learn about odds and how they can affect your chances while playing these games. Gambling is meant to be a form of entertainment more than anything else, and most players realize that they have a better chance of losing than they do winning, but that doesn’t keep you from wanting to win or from having hope that you will. That’s why it’s important to learn which games provide the best chances of actually winning, so that you can stick with them and maybe, just maybe, walk away with significantly more money than you showed up to the casino with. Knowing the odds will help you do just that.
Casino Games with Best and Worst Odds
Pokies
It’s really hard to give you any hard and fast numbers for pokies machines odds because they vary so much from one casino to the next. A range of between 85% and 95% is pretty standard for these machines when you play online, and some of the really generous casinos will give you back as much as 97% of the money that you bet with. The machine randomly pays out a mix of jackpots and small prizes to maintain the odds that a casino configures. That means a 95% pokies machine will pay out AU $95 for every AU $100 that it takes in. So if you play long enough you’ll almost always be negative on your investment, but if you play over a short period you can win more than you lose if lucky enough.
Video Poker
Video poker is known by many professional gamblers as one of the best games to play if you’re looking for a return on your investment. That’s because this game has very favourable odds when chosen properly. You must find full pay games that offer 9 to 1 for a full house and 6 to 1 for a flush. When you have a full pay table you can enjoy a return of around 99.54% with Jacks or Better and 100.7% with a Deuces Wild game. That means if you pick the right Deuces Wild game you can average profits over time instead of losses.
Roulette
Roulette is a simple game that has players bet on where a ball will land while rotating in a sectioned wheel. There are two variations that you should be aware of when playing roulette, American and European. American roulette has 0 and 00 slots that actually double the house edge by creating an additional space to drop the odds of you winning further without paying you for that drop in additional prize money. When you play American roulette you’re dealing with a house edge of 5.26% which means you can expect a return of 94.74% of your money as you play. When you play European roulette there is only a house edge of 2.70% giving you a return of 97.3%, which is much more favourable. This return is possible with any bet that you make on the table, but if you want to place bets on more difficult spaces such as a single number, you’ll have to play for a much longer period of time to ensure that you get back most of the money that you bet.
Craps
Craps is an enjoyable dice game that you’ll see in nearly every casino around the world. It has players betting on the rolls of others, and hoping for the best results as they go along. The very best bet that you can make while playing is the Don’t Pass or Don’t Come Bet, and that gives the house an edge of just 1.402%, that means you can expect to get back 98.598% of the money that you play at the table by making that bet regularly. That’s one of the best percentages that you’ll get from a casino game, making craps highly desirable for skilled gamblers that understand the rules. Other bets like specific numbers, Field bets, Hardways or Big bets are all much less favourable with house edges close to or exceeding 5% each.
Blackjack
Blackjack is a mix of skill and luck, but understanding how to play properly will dramatically improve your odds of winning money. The house edge that you’ll have to deal with as you play this game of 21 varies depending on the number of cards and the rules the dealer has to follow, but you should expect a return of between 99% and 99.5% when you play with proper strategy. That makes it one of the best paying casino games that you can play overall.
Keno
Keno is a simple game that has a player pick out a range of numbers that they believe will pop up on the machine during the next round. If most of the numbers pop up then the player wins a bunch of money. Keno is highly attractive because it can offer exceptionally high payouts as much as thousands of times the initial bet. Unfortunately it has horrible odds. A good Keno game will still have a house edge of around 25%. That’s dramatically worse than most of the other games you’ll play at a casino, even the simple pokies. That means for every AU $100 you bet, you’ll lose AU $25. If you want a shot at winning regularly, or you want to enjoy the best odds, stick with another game, nearly any other game.