Best and Worst Casino Bets, Ranked by House Edge
Last reviewed: August 2026
The spread between the best and worst common casino bets is enormous: from 0% on craps free odds to 18.65% on the Casino War tie. Two players at neighboring tables, betting the same dollars at the same pace, can be paying prices that differ by a factor of fifty. This page ranks the bets our simulators have verified: best first, traps last.
One framing note before the tables: a “best bet” is still a losing bet. Every figure below is the percentage of each wager the casino keeps on average. The good bets lose slowly; the bad ones lose fast. None of them wins over time, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something, see can you actually make money gambling? for the honest version of that answer.
The best bets in the casino
| Bet | House edge | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Craps free odds | 0.00% | Only exists behind a pass/don’t pass bet, which has its own edge |
| Video poker, 9/6 Jacks or Better | 0.46% | Requires optimal holds and the full-pay 9/6 paytable |
| Blackjack (basic strategy) | ~0.5% | Requires playing every hand correctly; varies with the rule set |
| Baccarat Banker | 1.06% | The 5% commission is already priced in, Banker is still best |
| Craps don’t pass | 1.36% | You’re betting against the table’s mood, not its math |
| Craps pass line | 1.41% | The default craps bet, and still one of the best in the house |
Three of these carry real conditions, and the conditions are the point:
Craps free odds is the only 0% bet in the building, but the casino only sells it attached to a pass line bet at 1.41%. Your blended edge falls as you take more odds, it never quite reaches zero, but 3-4-5x odds gets the combined price down to a fraction of most table games.
Blackjack’s ~0.5% assumes basic strategy. Play by feel and the edge climbs by whole percentage points. Our strategy trainer exists precisely because the discount is earned, not given.
Video poker’s 0.46% assumes the right paytable. The same game two machines over on a 6/5 paytable costs 5.00%: eleven times as much, verified by full enumeration of every possible deal. Check the full house and flush payouts before you sit.
The worst bets in the casino
| Bet | House edge | Why it exists |
|---|---|---|
| Casino War tie bet | 18.65% | A side bet on a coincidence, priced like one |
| Craps Any Seven | 16.67% | One-roll thrill; the payout is 4:1 on 5:1 odds |
| Baccarat tie | 14.36% | 8:1 sounds generous until you price how rarely ties happen |
| American roulette five-number | 7.89% | The only roulette bet worse than the wheel itself |
| Three Card Poker Pair Plus | 7.28% | The ante game next to it costs less than half as much |
| American roulette (any bet) | 5.26% | The second zero doubles the European wheel’s 2.70% |
The pattern is consistent: side bets and single-roll bets are where casinos put their worst prices, because they’re bought on impulse rather than compared. The baccarat tie, the Any Seven, and the five-number bet all share the same design: a big payout number displayed prominently, an edge nobody prints on the felt.
Slots belong in this conversation with an asterisk: they range from about 1% to 25% depending on the machine and jurisdiction, and unlike everything above, you usually can’t know which you’re playing.
Edge is the price, speed is the bill
Ranking bets by edge alone hides half the math. What you actually pay is edge × average bet × decisions per hour. Baccarat Banker at 1.06% dealt at 120 hands an hour costs more per hour than a slower game at twice the edge. A cheap bet played fast is not cheap, our expected value guide walks the arithmetic.
That’s also why the “worst” list is genuinely dangerous rather than academically bad: one-roll craps props resolve every single roll. You can put money on Any Seven several times a minute, which turns a 16.67% edge into one of the fastest ways to drain a bankroll in the building.
How we verified these numbers
Every figure on this page is computed by the simulators on this site: dealt, rolled, or spun millions of times against the published rules, and cross-checked against exact analytical results where full enumeration is possible. Nothing here is quoted from another website. The complete table across all thirteen games is at house edge by game, and our methodology explains how each number was produced. If you want to watch any of these edges emerge yourself, every game links to a free simulator: no signup, no real money.