Table games and what each one costs
Unlike a slot, a table game’s cost is arithmetic you can check from the payout rules in front of you. In every one of them a single choice — made before the first hand — matters more than everything you do afterwards.
19+ · Ontario · informational only
Ludibre hosts no gambling and accepts no deposits, wagers or payouts. This section explains how the mechanics work so you can read an operator’s own terms yourself.
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House edge, bet by bet
Derived from the payout rules named, not from any particular table.
| Game and bet | House edge | What drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Blackjack, basic strategy, 3:2 | ≈0.5% | The lowest edge in the building, and only with correct play on a favourable rule set. |
| Blackjack, 6:5 natural | ≈2% | One rule change, four times the cost, identical strategy. |
| Baccarat, banker | 1.06% | Commission included. Nothing to decide and almost nothing to lose to bad play. |
| Baccarat, player | 1.24% | Marginally worse and simpler to settle. |
| Baccarat, tie | ≈14% | The reason it is always the most prominent button on the table. |
| Craps, pass line | 1.41% | With free odds behind it, the combined edge falls further — the best-value bet on the floor. |
| Craps, any seven | 16.67% | The centre of the table is where the money goes. |
| European roulette | 2.70% | Single zero. Same on every bet the table offers. |
| American roulette | 5.26% | A second zero, nearly double the cost, identical-looking wheel. |
| Video poker, Jacks or Better 9/6 | ≈0.5% | Only with correct play and only on the full pay table. |
| Keno | 20 – 35% | Among the most expensive games anywhere. The prize structure, not the draw, does it. |
Blackjack
You are dealt two cards and draw toward 21 without passing it; the dealer plays a fixed script. Because the dealer’s script is fixed and yours is not, blackjack is the only common casino game where your decisions genuinely change the expected cost — from roughly half a per cent with correct play to several per cent with intuition.
The rule set decides the ceiling on that. A natural paying 3:2 rather than 6:5 is worth about 1.4 percentage points on its own, which dwarfs every other variation: the number of decks, whether the dealer stands on soft 17, whether you may double after splitting. Read the payout printed on the felt before you sit; it is the whole game.
Side bets — Perfect Pairs, 21+3, insurance — carry edges several times the main hand and are placed in the same motion. A player using correct strategy and taking every side bet available is paying more for the extras than the strategy saves.
Roulette
A single-zero wheel has 37 pockets and pays 35:1 on a straight number: the missing pocket is the entire house edge, 2.70 per cent on every bet the table offers. A double-zero wheel has 38 pockets, pays the same 35:1, and costs 5.26 per cent. Same game, same felt, nearly double the price.
Nothing else about roulette is a decision. Red or black, inside or outside, a system or no system — the edge is identical, because it is baked into the mismatch between 37 pockets and a 36-to-1 payout. The only choice that matters is which wheel you open.
Baccarat
Two hands are dealt to fixed drawing rules; you bet on which wins. There are no decisions after the wager, which is why the game is popular with high stakes and why it is unusually hard to play badly. Banker costs 1.06 per cent including the commission, player 1.24 per cent, and the tie around fourteen.
Scoreboards showing streaks of red and blue are a fixture of the game and a pure decoration: each coup is independent, so no pattern on the board carries information about the next one. Ontario’s rules forbid a game design that implies chances improve the longer you play — the roadmap is history, not a signal.
Craps
The pass line costs 1.41 per cent, and behind it sits the one bet in a casino with no house margin at all: free odds, paid at true odds once a point is established. Adding odds does not reduce the edge on the pass line itself — it adds a fair wager alongside it, so the edge on your combined stake falls.
Everything in the middle of the layout is the opposite. Any seven costs about 16.7 per cent; the hardways and one-roll propositions sit between five and twelve. The table is arranged so that the cheapest bet is the plainest and the most expensive ones are the most inviting.
Video poker and keno
Video poker is the other game where skill moves the number. A full-pay Jacks or Better machine — 9 coins for a full house, 6 for a flush — returns over 99 per cent with correct play; the same game on a reduced pay table returns several points less for identical decisions. The pay table is the product, and it is visible before you play.
Keno is the most expensive game in the room by a distance, typically 20 to 35 per cent. It is not rigged and the draw is fair — the prize structure is simply far below the true odds of matching. There is no strategy, no pattern and no version of it that is a good bet.
How this interacts with everything else
Table games are commonly weighted at ten per cent or excluded outright from bonus wagering, which makes them the wrong place to clear a requirement even when the terms allow it — the weighting table is where an offer dies. Live versions of these games are dealt by a person rather than an engine, which changes the pace and the table limits but not a single number above; the live format has its own page, including the protections that do not reach it. And the rules obliging an operator to publish the odds before you stake are the same ones that apply to slots.
Questions about the tables
- Is blackjack really the best game in the casino?
- On paper, and only conditionally. Half a per cent assumes a 3:2 payout, a dealer who stands on soft 17, and correct play on every hand. Change the payout to 6:5 and the edge quadruples; play by instinct instead of a strategy chart and it climbs further. A player using guesswork at a good blackjack table is often paying more than a baccarat player who thinks about nothing at all.
- Why does the tie bet in baccarat pay 8:1 if it is such a bad bet?
- Because the payout is smaller than the true odds by a wide margin. Ties occur roughly once in every ten or eleven coups, so a fair price would be around 9:1; paying 8:1 leaves a house edge around 14 per cent. The size of a payout tells you how rarely something happens, never how good the bet is.
- What are free odds in craps and why are they not advertised?
- A supplementary wager behind the pass line, paid at true odds with no house margin at all. Adding it dilutes the edge on your total stake — but it earns the house nothing, so nothing about the table layout invites you to make it. It is the only bet in a casino with no built-in margin, and you have to know it exists.
- Do card counting or betting systems work online?
- Betting systems do not: no staking pattern changes the expected value of a game of chance, they only move the risk around. Counting needs a shoe that is dealt deep and infrequently shuffled, which computerised games never provide and live studios deliberately avoid. Operators must also have measures to deter, prevent and detect advantage software and unfair play.
- Are the odds the same on a live table and a computerised one?
- The rules of the game decide the edge, and the same rules give the same number in both formats. What differs is pace, minimum stake and — importantly for anyone clearing a bonus — how much each wager counts toward a requirement. Table games are commonly weighted at ten per cent or excluded entirely.
- Should I take insurance in blackjack?
- No, unless you are counting. It is a separate bet on the dealer holding a ten, paid at 2:1 when the true odds are worse than that, which makes it one of the more expensive side bets available. Its position at the moment of maximum tension is not an accident.