What game has the best odds in a casino? Blackjack has a 49% chance of winning, which is the best odds you will find in a casino.
There are a lot of casinos in the world, although they are illegal in some countries, such as China. China gets around the law by allowing them on the island of Macau, which is part of China, but designated a special administrative region. The USA has the most casinos, with 2,184, according to the World Casino Directory. This is more than four times more than the next country, which is Romania with 464 casinos. There are so many casinos because they are huge money spinners for the people that own them. It obviously depends on the size of the casino and the location, but some of the larger casinos in a place like Las Vegas can earn $10 million or more a day.
If casinos exist on gambling, how do they make so much money? This is completely down to the way the casinos are set up and the fact that the “house always wins”. When the odds of any game in a casino are worked out, they are skewed so that the odds favor the house. We talked about the odds of blackjack in the introduction, so let’s use that to explain. The odds that you will win are 49%, not 50%. If you play one game you might win because your odds are close enough to 50%. If you play two games, or even ten games, you might come out on top. You might even walk away after 50 games with money in your pocket. The house always wins because casinos don’t think about individual games. They don’t care that they lose some games because they know that, over time, they will win 51% of all blackjack games that are played, which will be a profit. You can see it more clearly with roulette. If you put your money on red or black, and it comes up, you double your money. It seems like it is 50:50, but it is not because that would mean the casino’s profit is down to chance. All roulette tables have a zero, which is neither red nor black. That puts the odds at 47.4% of red or black, which means, over time, the casino will win because their odds are 52.6% that you won’t win.
So, why does blackjack have the best odds? It is because there are a couple of rules that can affect the dealer’s chances. The idea of blackjack is that everyone gets 2 cards to start with and you have to try to get 21. You can keep the cards you have or take more. If you go over 21, you lose your stake. If you are under 21 and the dealer goes over 21, you win. The dealer plays after you have played, so they have an advantage already. If you have gone over 21, they can keep the cards they have. However, if they are playing and they get 17, there are two different rules. In some casinos, they have to stand on this, which means you have a good chance of winning. In some other casinos, they have to take another card on this, which means you have a good chance of winning because there are more cards over 4 than under 4. However, this is not enough for you to have the advantage and the odds of winning at blackjack are 42.22%. So, why did I say 49%? It is because you can also draw in blackjack. That happens when you and the dealer have the same value of cards. When that happens, your stake is returned to you. The odds of a draw are 8.48%. When I said you have a 49% chance of winning, that might have been a little misleading. You have a 42.22% chance of winning. You have a 49% chance of not losing, which, in a casino, is not a bad thing. However, over time, the casino will win because 51% is greater than 49%.
Some people worked out that they could increase the odds of blackjack if they could work out how many high cards were left in the deck. The more high cards there are, the more chance the dealer has of going bust and the more chance you have of winning. These people worked out how to keep a running count of the deck and they would bet more money when there were more high cards and they had greater odds of winning. The casinos cottoned on to this pretty quickly and they introduced more decks to the game. It is very difficult to keep a count of five or six decks and it really reduced the effectiveness. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by Drew Rae: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-playing-poker-1871508/
Sources
https://www.gamblingsites.com/blog/10-worst-casino-games-11112/
https://www.onlinegambling.com/blackjack/odds/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_game
https://www.worldcasinodirectory.com/countries
https://creatingourcommonwealth.org/Casinos-Make-A-Day
https://www.casino.org/roulette/odds/