Gambling in casinos, whether they are based online or on land, can be an extremely fun way to pass the time and test how lucky you are feeling on that particular day. Whether you are a bright-eyed amateur or a chiseled veteran, you should be able to find games that fit your skillset so that you can maximize the amount of fun that you have per every dollar that you spend.
- Worst Odds In Casino Games
- Best And Worst Casino Games
- Worst Casino Games Odds
- Worst Casino Games To Play
Sometimes casino games have such a high house edge built into them that you should avoid playing them altogether. The house edge is defined as the mathematical advantage that a casino has over you in a specific game. There is no way to beat this house edge with any sort of special strategy or system, since the casino is designed to make money and they do so by offering games where they will make money in the long run.
- Worst Casino and Table Games for New Players 100 Best Casino Sites Posted on February 6, 2018 by Kristen Hickling February 6, 2018 Gambling in casinos, whether they are based online or on land, can be an extremely fun way to pass the time and test how lucky you are feeling on that particular day.
- The worst casino games are those with too high of a house edge. If you intend on playing them nonetheless, make sure you avoid casino games that involve too big of a disadvantage for the player. The following are examples of popular casino games.
The reason craps is also on my worst casino games list is because of some of the terrible bets on the table. If you’re placing bets on the more intricate and complicated options on the craps table, you’re facing some of the worst odds in the casino. That’s why craps is both one of the best and one of the worst games in any casino.
Other times, casino games have such advanced rules and strategies that you are better off just finding a simpler game to play. This is especially true for beginners who simply have not done the proper amount of studying on the different rules and strategies that would lead them to know what they are doing.
For the sake of all the casino newbies in the house, I will now break down some of the common casino games that you should actively avoid. Even if you have a feeling that you will enjoy one of these casino games, you should not jump into the proverbial lion’s den until you have a full understanding of what is expected from a player who is participating in them.
Craps
Craps is a dice game in which each player makes a wager on what they think the numbers on the dice will be, whether it is for just one roll or for a series of rolls. This game can seem very appealing to beginners because you get to chuck a pair of dice across a table while everyone is cheering, which can sometimes make you feel just like one of those high rollers from the movies.
The large number of bets that are placed each round, combined with the frantic pace of play, makes for some high-octane gambling action. To give you an idea of the sheer number of betting options involved in craps, you can make:
- Pass Bets
- Come Bets
- Don’t Pass Bets
- Don’t Come Bets
- Field Bets
- Horn Bets
- Any 7 Bets
- Hi-Lo Bets
- Craps Bets
- Yo Bets
- 3 Bets
- 2 Bets
- 12 Bets
- Hard Bets
- Place Bets
- Lay Bets
- and more
Unfortunately, this game is not very beginner-friendly, simply due to its complicated nature. Even though the house edge in this game is one of the lowest that you can find inside of a casino, it could take numerous hours just to learn about all of the various bets that are possible and when to take advantage of them. Instead of spending this much time learning the rules to a game where the house has an edge, you are probably better off trying to teach yourself a game such as poker where you have a better shot at winning in the long run.
In addition to the various bets that can be made, the structure of the game itself can also be quite confusing for a beginner. Each betting round has two phases, which are called the “come out” and the “point” phases. To start each round, a player will make a couple of “come out” rolls and then proceed from there. However, if you are new to this game, you will find yourself staring blankly at a large table covered with numbers and words with no idea of what they mean or what you should do next.
Blackjack
Even if you are a beginner to the casino world, you have probably heard of the game of blackjack. Blackjack is a card game where a player or group of players compete against the dealer.
The rules of blackjack are extremely simple as long as you are good at basic addition. You also need to be aware that face cards are worth 10 points and an ace can be worth either 1 point or 11 points.
The object of the game is to get a hand value that is as close to 21 as possible without going over 21. If your hand value goes over 21, you lose the hand, and if the dealer’s hand value goes over 21, you win the hand.
Blackjack is arguably one of the most popular games in the world because of the fact that it has the lowest house edge that you can find in a casino. There are even a large number of people who have been kicked out of casinos for being TOO good at this game, since it is actually beatable if you are good at counting cards from six or more decks.
As a rule of thumb, any time a game is great for veterans and experts, it is probably not going to be good for beginners. Even though the rules are simple, the strategies that must be used are not quite so easy.
If you want to confirm this for yourself, you can simply search the internet for a blackjack strategy chart. These charts will require you to do some studying before you are totally comfortable with what to do in every situation, which means that it is not a great game for beginners.
If you do not know the proper blackjack strategy, you will be losing money at a faster pace than normal because of your sub-optimal decision making. Each action has a certain return on investment tied to it, and you want to be sure you have the highest return on investment possible when you gamble so that you can have more fun per every dollar that you spend.
A final reason why beginners are out of place at a blackjack table is that any bad decisions can also change the outcome of the hand for other players at the table. This ripple effect could cause some serious arguments and scuffles in my experience. Most people are not amused when you decide to ask for another card when you are already sitting at 18 points and you draw the card that they were waiting for.
Keno
Keno is a casino game that is very similar to the lottery because all you need to do is pick a bunch of numbers and hope that they are winners. Each round, players will choose a specific amount of numbers from one to eight. After that, the ball machine or the random number generator will pick twenty “winning numbers” at once.
The payouts for each player will be based on how many “winning numbers” they picked. These payout amounts vary from casino to casino but in the grand scheme of things they are heavily impacted by how many numbers were picked, how many numbers were correct, and how much money was wagered.
There is no strategy to Keno, nor is there any system that helps you to win any more than just picking numbers at random. While it might sound like this is good for beginners, I refuse to recommend this game to anyone who is new to a casino, simply because of its unforgiving house edge.
It is true that the house edge in Keno will vary from casino to casino, but mostly it will be between 25% and 35%. This is an insanely high range, considering that the normal house edge for a casino game that is not a slot machine is usually around 5%.
If picking random numbers is your idea of a fun casino game, we recommend that you try roulette instead of Keno. The house edge on roulette is only 5%, which is light-years better than 35%. This means that for every dollar you bet, you will only lose five cents on average, instead of thirty-five cents. If you are a beginner who is just starting his casino gambling career, you should probably stick to games that have a lower house edge, since it will guarantee that you get a lot more fun per every dollar that you spend.
Conclusion
Playing various gambling games inside of a casino can be fun for everyone, whether you are a newbie or an expert veteran. The trick to having the maximum amount of fun per dollar is to figure out which games are right for your current experience level as a gambler.
For all of the beginner players that are reading this, I hope that this blog shed some light on the type of things you should be looking for when choosing a casino game to play. By avoiding games that have an extremely high house edge or insanely complicated strategies, you will guide yourself toward games that are more suitable for you. Some of the games that I recommend avoiding as a beginner include blackjack, keno, and craps.
Here’s the thing about casino games:
They’re all rigged.
But not in the way you think they are.
I had an interesting argument with a friend of mine the other night. He’s a conspiracy theorist, through and through. I mean, he believes the earth is flat (for real).
He’s absolutely convinced that the results of casino games aren’t random at all. He thinks all the games are rigged so that you can’t win. The only exception, according to him, is craps. He said that it’s impossible to rig a pair of dice.
I tried to explain to him that the casinos don’t need to cheat on the outcomes because they’ve set the payout odds up in such a way that they have a mathematical edge that no one can beat in the long run. They do this by offering payout odds that aren’t as good as the odds of winning.
For example, if you were playing roulette and betting on black, and that bet paid off at even money, you’d break even in the long run if you had a 50% chance of winning.
But you don’t have a 50% chance of winning that bet. You only have a 47.37% probability of winning that bet, because there are 38 numbers on the wheel, and only 18 of them are black—not 19.
The House Edge in Casino Games
Casinos, gamblers, and writers quantify this advantage that the house experiences with a percentage called “the house edge.”
It’s the long-term average percentage of each bet that the casino expects to win because of this discrepancy between the odds of winning and the payout odds.
For example, if I say that the house edge in roulette is 5.26%, it means that you can expect to lose an average of $5.26 every time you place a $100 bet on a roulette spin.
The higher the house edge is for a game, the worse the odds are for the player. The lower the house edge is, the better the odds are for the player.
And to make things even more confusing, many games offer multiple bets, each of which has a different house edge. Craps is a good example of this. Some of the bets at the craps table are among the best odds in the casino, but many of them have some of the worst odds in the casino.
This post focuses exclusively on the worst odds in the casino. Please don’t place these bets unless you just hate money and love casinos.
Also, don’t worry about whether the outcomes to the games are rigged. They’re not, for the simple reason that they don’t need to be. The casinos make more money by offering honest games. If the games’ outcomes were rigged, no one would play them.
1- Keno Has a House Edge Close to 30%
Keno is a simple game of number-picking that closely resembles the lottery. It is, in fact, a privately run lottery hosted by the casino with drawings every few minutes. You choose between 9 and 15 numbers from 80 potential numbers.
The casino draws 20 balls from that same pool of 80 numbers. If enough of your numbers match the numbers that the casino drew, you win a prize. The more matches you have, the more your payout is.
If you know anything about the lottery, you know that the house edge is close to 50%. Keno, being a similar game, has a similar house edge. But it’s actually a better game than the lottery, with a house edge that can vary between 20% and 40%. The average seems to hover around 30%.
Players like keno because they can stay in action relatively constantly without risking much money. They also enjoy the possibility of winning a huge cash prize. The only other games in the casino which offer such a potentially big return on your bet are the slot machines.
But that roughly 30% house edge makes keno the game with the worst odds in the casino. Most of the other bets on most of the other games don’t even come close.
2- The Logo or Joker Bet on the Big Six Wheel Has a House Edge of about 24%
The Big Six Wheel is such an old-fashioned casino game that it’s not even available in most casinos anymore. It resembles a carnival game more than anything else. All the bets on the Big Six Wheel are lousy, but a bet on the logo/joker is usually the worst bet.
Here’s how the Big Six Wheel works:
You have a vertical “wheel of fortune” with various dollar amounts on the wheel. Usually, you can bet on the following dollar amounts:
- $1
- $2
- $5
- $10
- $20
- The Joker
You bet a dollar on any of these amounts, and if the wheel lands on that amount, you win the prize. The probabilities of winning are, of course, determined by how many total stops are on the wheel and how many of those are the prize you bet on.
You might have 54 total stops on the wheel. If only one of those is the joker, then the probability of winning a bet on the joker is 1/54, or 53 to 1.
The payoff for that bet is usually 40 to 1.
That’s a huge discrepancy between your odds of winning and the payout for the bet, but what does it mean in terms of an average.
That’s easy to calculate, too.
Assume you bet $100 on 54 spins of the wheel, and assume you get statistically perfect results. You lose 53 times, for a total loss of $5300. You win once, for a total win of $4000. Your net loss is $1300.
Since you want an average loss per spin, you divide that net loss of $1300 by the 54 spins, and you find that you’ve lost an average of $24.07 per spin.
Since you were betting $100 per spin, you can say that the average loss is 24.07% of your bet.
That’s a huge house edge, making this bet an example of the 2nd worst odds in the casino.
The $5 bet and the $20 bet are almost as bad. The house edge on each of those is 22.22%.
Of course, some casinos have different versions of the Big Six Wheel with different prizes and different odds.
3- The 2-Face Domino Bet in Sic Bo Has a House Edge of 18.52%
Sic Bo is an Asian-themed dice game where you bet on the outcome of a roll of 3 dice. You can bet on various outcomes, like the total of the 3 dice, or whether the total is high or low. The house edge is high on almost all these bets, but the 2-face domino bet is usually the Sic Bo bet with the worst odds.
The 2-face domino bet is a wager on 2 specific numbers coming up on the dice. For example, you might place a 1-6 2-face domino bet. If one of the dice has a 1, while another has a 6, you win this bet.
If you place a 1-6 bet, any of the following outcomes would be winners:
- 1-6-1
- 1-6-2
- 1-6-3
- 1-6-4
- 1-6-5
- 1-6-6
It’s a horrible bet in the middle of a table full of mediocre and worse bets. The small and big bets are really the only Sic Bo bets worth making, and the house edge on those is 2.78%. That’s far from the worst in the casino, but that’s far and away the best bet on the Sic Bo table.
4- The Tie Bet in Casino War Has a House Edge of 18.65%
Casino War is one of the dumbest games in the casino. It’s literally just a gambling version of the kids’ game where you compare one card from each of you to see which one is higher. It’s also a lightning fast game, which means that you’ll lose more money faster because of the number of bets you’ll place per hour.
Most people just place a standard bet, which wins if the player’s card is higher than the dealer’s. It loses if the dealer’s card is higher. If there’s a tie, the player can surrender half his bet or go to war. If he goes to war, he places a 2nd bet, the dealer burns 3 cards, and then deals another card to both the player and herself. If the player then wins, he gets paid off, but only on that 2nd bet. The first bet is considered a push. If the player loses, he loses both bets.
It’s obvious where the house gets its edge in that situation, since the game would be 50/50 if the player didn’t have to place a 2nd bet for a chance to only win one unit.
But you also have the option to bet that the first 2 cards will tie. If you win that bet, the payoff is 10 to 1. The odds of a tie vary based on how many decks are in use. In a 6-deck game, the odds of a tie are about 12.5 to 1.
It’s silly to play Casino War to begin with.
But since the tie bet offers some of the worst odds in the casino, it’s even sillier to place that bet.
5- The “Any 7” Bet in Craps Has a House Edge of 16.67%
Some bets in craps are one-roll bets. The outcome of the next roll determines whether the bet wins or loses. The any 7 bet is one of these. It’s just a bet that the next roll of the dice will wind up with a total of 7.
This doesn’t sound like the worst bet in the world at first. After all, a 7 is the most likely total in craps. The odds of winning this bet are 5 to 1.
The problem is that the payoff for this bet is only 4 to 1.
Using the $100 bets on 6 perfect rolls of the dice method for calculating the house edge, you get the following results:
You lose $100 on 5 bets, for a total loss of $500. You win $400 on one bet, for a net loss of $100.
Divide $100 by 6 spins to get the average amount lost per roll, and you get $16.67.
Some of the bets at the craps table offer a house edge as low as 1.41%,
Why would you feel the need to place a bet where your average losses will be more than 10 times that?
Ignorance is the only excuse I can imagine.
6- Slot Machines Might Have a House Edge as High as 25%
Slot machines, unlike other casino games, make their house edge opaque. To calculate the house edge of a casino game, you need 2 pieces of information:
- The prize amount
- The probability of winning
On a slot machine, you have a list of prize amounts for the various reel combinations. It’s called the pay table.
Worst Odds In Casino Games
What you lack are the probabilities of winning these prizes. It depends on the probability of getting any given symbol on the pay line, and that probability can be anything. The results on a slot machine spin are determined by a computer program called a random number generator (RNG).
It can be programmed to give one symbol a 1/10 probability, another symbol a 1/20 probability, and all the other symbols 1/8 probabilities. Or you could have an entirely different set of probabilities.
You can even have 2 slot machines with the same symbols and the same themes with entirely different probabilities attached to them. In other words, the machines might be identical on the surface, but one might have a house edge of 5% while the other has a house edge of 25%.
Most slot machines don’t have a house edge this high.
But it’s impossible for you to tell which slots have which house edge figures behind them.
Also, no other game in the casino plays as fast as slots. Remember how I said Casino War plays really fast? I was talking about 200 bets per hour, maybe.
But it’s not unusual to make 600 bets per hour on a slot machine.
My advice to savvy gamblers who like their money is to avoid slot machines as much as possible.
7- The 5-Number Bet in American Roulette Has a House Edge of 7.89%
Roulette odds are some of the most mediocre in the house. A standard bet on an American roulette wheel has a house edge of 5.26%.
But one bet on the American roulette wheel has the distinction of offering a house edge even worse than that.
This is the 5-number bet.
It’s a bet that the ball will land on any of the following results:
- 0
- 00
- 1
- 2
- 3
The probability of winning that bet is 5/38.
If you placed $100 bets on that bet for 38 spins, you’d win 5 times, and you’d lose 33 times. That’s a loss of $3300.
![Worst Worst](https://www.1on8.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1501-Melb-Casino-CasinoGames-BlackJack-Table-974x676-02-2-974x509.jpg)
The payoff is 6 to 1, so you’ll win $600 on 5 of those bets, for winnings of $3000.
Your net loss is $300.
Averaged out over 38 spins, that’s $7.89 lost per spin or 7.89%.
Most people shouldn’t bet on any of the bets at the American roulette table, but placing this bet is just silly. You might as well give the casino your money and let them kick you in the stomach while you’re at it.
Best And Worst Casino Games
Conclusion
It’s always interesting to look at subjects like the worst odds in the casino. It’s also important to remember that from a certain perspective, it doesn’t really matter how good or bad the odds are. If the house has any edge, no matter how small, the casino will eventually win all your money. You just need to play long enough, and they’ve got you.
Worst Casino Games Odds
But from the perspective of getting value for your money, which bets offer the worst odds versus which bets offer the best odds is a crucial question. It helps you decide where to put your money to get the best chance for a lot of entertainment in the casino for your money.
Worst Casino Games To Play
If you’re losing $230/hour instead of $8/hour, you’re probably not getting as much entertainment for your money. Understanding which bets offer the worst odds is the first step in getting to that smaller hourly loss amount.