Casino House Edge Calculator
The House Edge is a term used to describe the mathematical advantage that the gambling game, and therefore the commercial gambling venue, has over you as you play over time. This advantage results in an assured percentage return to the venue over time, and for you an assured percentage loss of what you bet.
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- Casino House Edge Calculator Online
- Big Six
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It’s important that people don’t think that they can win, because you can’t win in gambling. You can win for a little while but you can’t win in the long run.” – Michael Piggot, spokesman for Tabcorp, one of Australia’s largest betting agencies, on the National 9 News, September 2005.
The House Edge assists the gambling provider as a commercial business to cover its costs of providing the game, paying for the staff, maintaining the casino or club etc. It also helps to turn the business a profit. Any profit the business makes from gambling comes from the money the gamblers pay into the game, whether it’s a poker machine, Keno, Blackjack or other game.
How to calculate the house edge. Last update: August 2019. In a separate article we saw how the house edge is the casino's average profit per bet, in percentage terms. In this article we'll see how to calculate it. The main point is to see that when you win, the casino always pays you less than true odds. The house edge is a statistical way of measuring the casino’s advantage over the player. When a gambling writer suggests that a game has a house edge of 5%, they mean that you’re expected (target=”blank”mathematically) to lose an average of 5% of your bet every time you wager. The house edge is half of one percent so if we take $100 million and multiply it by.005 we get $500,000 which is how much the casino expects to make off of you in the long run if you continue to bet $100 a hand. So essentially each bet you make is worth about 50 cents to the casino. Obviously you don’t just hand over 50 cents every round.
For example the House Edge built into a poker machine in Tasmania means that on average around 10% of every bet you make, that is, every time you press the button, goes back to the venue. In Tasmania the law actually sets the amount that the venue can keep (its House Edge) as 15%, but the venues, through the suppliers of poker machines, Network Gaming, have opted for around 10%.
Calculating the House Edge for Any Blackjack Game. Blackjack is one of the most famous casino games both at the online as well as land-based casinos. Moreover, the house edge in Blackjack game is the lowest. There are a lot of players who go out there and think that counting cards can help them win at an online casino when it comes to Blackjack. Calculate the house advantage by dividing our $1 net loss by our $66 total investment (1 / 66 = 0.01515, which rounds to 1.52%). A 1.52% house advantage means if we keep betting the Place 6 over a long period of time, we expect to lose an average of about $0.15 for every $10 that we bet. The casino odds for the Big 6 bet are 1:1, or even money.
How does it work? In poker machines there is a mechanism called a Random Number Generator. It’s actually a computer and it’s programmed to select the combinations of symbols – at random – when you press the button. On a poker machine with five reels and thirty-five possible stops on each reel there are 52,521,875 possible stop combinations. The Random Number Generator is programmed so that there will be more losses (losing combinations of symbols) than wins.
An easy way to think about it is with a roulette wheel. On a single zero roulette wheel there are 36 numbers plus the green zero. When the wheel is spinning the ball can stop on any one of the 36 numbers or the zero: 37 possible stops. Therefore the mathematical odds of you choosing one of those possible stops is 1 in 37. But… the house pay outs are set at 35 to 1. So over time, the house will never lose. They have a 2.7% house edge.
The house edge is in every form of commercial gambling and means that the more you play over time, the more you will lose.
You may get lucky in the short term and be ahead but if you keep playing, eventually you will lose. See also Gamblers Fallacy.
Further information:
Ever wondered how much you really spend on gambling over a year? This calculator can give you a true picture of gambling spending.
Calculation of Casino House Edge
The house edge (HE) is defined as the casino profit expressed as a percentage of the player's original bet.
The player's disadvantage is a result of the casino not paying winning wagers according to the game's 'true odds,' which are the payouts expected considering the odds of a wager either winning or losing.
The house edge of casino games vary greatly with the game. House edges for slot machines and Keno may be up to 15% and 25% respectively.
In games which have a skill element, such as Blackjack or Spanish 21, the house edge is defined as the house advantage from optimal play (without the use of advanced techniques such as card counting), on the first hand of the shoe (container holding the cards).
The set of the optimal plays for all possible hands is known as 'basic strategy' and is highly dependent on the specific rules, and even the number of decks used. Good Blackjack and Spanish 21 games have house edges below 0.5%.
Example #1:
Calculate the house edge for American Roulette, which contains two zeros and 36 non-zero numbers (18 red and 18 black).
Solution #1:If a player bets $1 on red, his/her chances of winning $1 is 18/38 since 18 red numbers exist out of 38. However, his/her chance of losing $1 (i.e., winning −$1) is 20/38. Therefore, the expected value may be calculted as follows:
Expected Value = (1)(18/38) + (−1)(20/38)
Expected Value = 18/38 − 20/38
Expected Value = − 2/38 = − 1/19
Expected Value = −5.26%
Therefore, the house edge is 5.26%.
Example #2:
Calculate the house edge for European Roulette, which contain a single zero and 36 non-zero numbers (18 red and 18 black).
If a player bets $1 on red, his/her chances of winning $1 is 18/37 since 18 red numbers exist out of 37. However, his/her chance of losing $1 (i.e., winning −$1) is 19/37. Therefore, the expected value may be calculted as follows:
Expected Value = (1)(18/37) + (−1)(19/37)
Expected Value = 18/37 − 19/37
Expected Value =
Casino House Edge Calculator Download
−1/37Expected Value = −2.7%
Therefore, the house edge is 2.7%.
Example #3:
Calculate the house edge for a game played by wagering on a number from the roll of a single die with a payout of four times the amount wagered for a winning number.
Casino House Edge Calculator Online
Since the probability of a winning number for a single roll of a die is 1/6, it follows the game has 5 to 1 odds. However, with a payout of only four times the amount wagered (i.e., 4 to 1) for a winning number, the house edge may be calculated as follows:
House Edge = (true odds − payout odds) / (true odds + 1)
House Edge = (5 − 4)/(5 + 1)
Big Six
Casino House Edge Calculator Game
House Edge = 1/6House Edge ≈ 16.67%