Atlassino Academy · How casinos work · Lesson 3 of 8
Why you lose more than the edge
The house edge is a price on each bet, and one evening bets the same buy-in over and over — which is why a room keeps far more of the buy-in than the house edge.
You bring $100 to a double-zero roulette wheel, bet $10 a spin and play for 2 hours. How much of the $100 is gone, on average, when you stand up?
The short answer
About $40.00 of the $100 is gone on average, which is 40% of the money you brought — far more than the 5.26% the wheel charges on each bet. The house edge is the price of one bet, and an evening is not one bet. Two hours of $10 spins put $760 on the layout, which is your $100 bet 7.6 times over, and the wheel keeps its 5.26% out of the whole $760.
The bet on each spin, times the spins in the evening, times the house edge, makes the bill: what the evening costs on average.
Leoformer dealer · rules and maths
Five per cent of a hundred dollars is five dollars. That arithmetic is right, and it is not the arithmetic the wheel is doing.
The wheel charges the bet in front of you, then it charges the next bet, and then the one after that. The same chips go out onto the layout and come back to you dozens of times in an hour. Count those trips, and the missing money stops being a mystery: the wheel took its price on every trip.
The same loss, divided two ways
What a game charges has a name: the house edge (the share of every dollar bet the casino keeps on average, over many rounds). The house edge comes out of each bet — out of this $10 on the layout, then out of the next $10, then out of the one after that.
The number you care about on the way out is a different one: of the money you brought — your buy-in — how much is gone? The house edge divides the loss by the money bet; your share of the buy-in divides the same loss by the money you brought.
The same money lost, divided by the money bet, gives the house edge. The same money lost, divided by the money you brought, gives your share of the buy-in.
The bill is the bet, times the rounds, times the house edge
Three numbers decide what an evening costs on average, and you multiply the three together: the size of each bet, how many rounds you bet on, and the house edge of the game. One bet put down and settled is one round (one full go of the game: bets down, cards or dice, then settling). What the multiplication gives you is the bill: the average cost of the evening, in dollars.
Put the whole $100 on red once and stand up, and the house edge and your share of the buy-in are the same number. The bet was $100 and the buy-in was $100 — the same money — so 5.26% of the bet and 5.26% of the buy-in are the same $5.26. Spend the same $100 in smaller pieces, $10 at a time, and the house edge and your share of the buy-in come apart.
The whole buy-in on red, once
The buy-in in ten pieces, each bet once
Two hours of spins
A double-zero wheel gets through about 38 spins an hour. Two hours at that pace is 76 spins, and 76 spins at $10 a spin is $760 put over the table — out of a buy-in of $100.
No Canadian room publishes how fast its tables run, so that pace is the pace of the Las Vegas Strip rating table: a crowded table is slower, an empty one faster. What pace does to the price of an hour is lesson 2 of this track.
So two hours of $10 spins cost $40.00 on average, and $40.00 is 40% of the $100 you brought — from a wheel whose house edge is 5.26% a bet. All the money that crosses the felt over the evening, the $760, is the turnover (all the money that goes over the table in an evening: the same dollars again and again), and the wheel charges its 5.26% on every dollar of the turnover.
Amounts are in Canadian dollars. The $100, the $10 a spin and the two hours are examples, not suggestions. And none of this forecasts one evening: the bill is what many evenings of this shape cost on average.
The cheapest table on the floor
A wheel is an easy target, so take the same three numbers to the cheapest game in the room. Blackjack on the table rules BCLC publishes, played by the full strategy chart, leaves the house 0.53% of each bet — a tenth of what the wheel charges. But a blackjack table deals about 70 hands an hour, so three hours at the table is 210 hands, and every one of those hands is a decision (a choice you make after the bet is down that changes what the round costs on average; roulette and baccarat have none).
Three hours of blackjack on BCLC’s published table rules
So the house edge is 0.53% of a bet, and your share of the buy-in is 7.4%.
None of that arithmetic makes the cheap table a poor choice: over the same three hours it still costs far less than the wheel, as the table below shows. And 0.53% belongs to one published set of table rules, not to blackjack everywhere: the Blackjack strategy tool works the house edge out for the rules at your table.
| Double-zero wheel | Blackjack, BCLC’s rules | |
|---|---|---|
| House edge on each bet | 5.26% | 0.53% |
| Rounds in three hours | 114 spins | 210 hands |
| Over the table | $1,140 | $2,100 |
| The bill | $60.00 | $11.05 |
Three things move the bill, and three do not
| What you change | Does the bill move? | What that looks like |
|---|---|---|
| The size of each bet | Yes, in step | An hour of the wheel at $25 a spin instead of $10: $50.00 instead of $20.00. |
| Rounds you bet on | Yes, in step | Half an hour off inside the two hours: $30.00 instead of $40.00. A round you do not bet on costs nothing, which makes a break the one free lever. |
| Stopping | Yes — it ends the count | Ninety minutes at the blackjack table instead of three hours: $5.53 instead of $11.05 — the only lever still in reach once an evening is under way. |
| Which bet you put the money on | No | 76 spins cost the same $40.00, red or a single number. How far one evening lands from that average is lesson 5 of this track. |
| Your seat, or the next table along | No | Same bet, same rounds, same house edge. |
| Playing with “the casino’s money” | No | There is no such money: chips carry no record of where they came from, and every chip costs the same to bet as the first one did. |
Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks
The size of the bet and the number of hours are both decided before you sit down, and both are far easier to decide at home than at the table. Pick the bet, pick the hours, write them down at home — then the evening has nothing to argue about. Game plan walks through it and keeps nothing on a server.
And if what is on the table starts to feel like money you need, no arithmetic is the thing to reach for. Stop there and call one of the lines below — that is what the lines are for.
If it stops being fun
If gambling stops being entertainment, help is available. 19+ in most of Canada; 18+ in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec. More on responsible gaming.
What the room calls your share of the buy-in
Your share of the buy-in has a name on the other side of the table: rooms call it hold, and for a room hold is a working number, not a turn of phrase. Points at Casino Regina’s tables are worked out partly from a theoretical hold percentage — from what the table expects to keep of the money players bring to it.
The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation publishes two payout figures for its casinos, each measured against a different pile of money.
| Paid back at its casinos last year | Measured against |
|---|---|
| 91.5% at the machines | every dollar bet |
| 78.5% at the live tables | the chips customers bought |
Neither figure is the price of your table: the live-table figure covers a year, a whole province and every live game together.
Round and round
You are handed a plan — how much money, how many hours, which game — and you take the evening through that plan. Each moment is a decision that either keeps to the plan or changes what goes over the table, and the answer shows the two branches side by side: what goes over the table, what the evening costs on average (that is the bill) and the share of the buy-in, so the size of each lever can be read rather than argued. Nothing is scored on character: a moment is measured against the plan on the screen. The lesson is one run: every square on the strip below is one moment of the run, and all the squares are there from the start. Only your first answer on each moment counts, and when a level’s squares are full the next level begins by itself.
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The practice table needs JavaScript. Here is one moment from it, with the answer.
The practice table deals ten of these on each level. Here is one from each, with the answer and the arithmetic behind it.
An hour in, you are ahead: $160 in front of you, an hour of the plan still to go. Someone at the table calls the extra $60 “the casino’s money”. What does the plan say?
Tonight’s plan · $100 brought · $10 a spin · 2 hours · a double-zero wheel, 38 spins an hour
One hour in
- Keep $10 a spin, as planned The second hour then costs what the first one did: $20.00 on average, and the evening ends on $40.00.
- Go up to $25 a spin — it is the casino’s money now Chips carry no record of where they came from, and the bill goes up with the bet: $50.00 for that hour instead of $20.00, which is $30.00 more.
- Put the extra $60 away and play the plan Nothing in the arithmetic changes — the hour still costs $20.00 — but money put away is out of the evening, so it cannot go back over the table.
Being ahead changes neither the bet, nor the spins, nor the edge, and those three are the whole bill. Going up to $25 raises it by $30.00 for that hour alone.
The three hours are up, $96 in chips, and the table is a friendly one. What does one more hour at the planned bet cost?
Tonight’s plan · $150 brought · $10 a hand · 3 hours · blackjack on the table rules BCLC publishes, 70 hands an hour
Stand up on plan
One more hour, planned bet
- Stand up: the plan is done The evening closes at $11.05 on average, 7.4% of the $150 brought.
- One more hour, same bet 70 more hands is $3.68 on average, and the share of the buy-in goes from 7.4% to 9.8%.
- Stay until the chips are gone That takes the time limit off the evening altogether, and the bill goes up with every hand played. How long a buy-in lasts is worked out by a tool of its own, linked from this lesson.
An extra hour at this table is cheap — $3.68 — and it is not free. The plan said three hours; this is the moment a plan is worth having.
How the practice table works
One strip, no rounds. Every square on the strip is one moment of this lesson, and all the squares are there from the start. The square keeps your first answer; when a level’s squares are full the next level begins by itself, with no button in between.
The figures. Every amount in a moment and in its answer is worked out when the page is built, by the same code as the rest of this page: the bet, times the rounds, times the house edge for each branch, and the difference between two branches wherever a moment compares them. There is no balance and nothing adds up from one moment to the next — each moment is its own evening.
Practice. A moment answered outside the plan goes on your list. Practising deals those moments again; answering one inside the plan takes it off the list. Practice does not change the count: only first answers do.
Jumping ahead. The level buttons above the table are all live: press one and the run carries on there. The squares you left empty stay empty on the strip.
Levels. Level 1: moments in a two-hour evening at a double-zero wheel. Level 2: moments at the cheapest table on the floor.
Check yourself
Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks
Five quick ones. Pick an answer, then check it. No timer, no points: just whether it stuck.
And the question at the start
The answer is about $40.00 of the $100, which is 40% of the money you brought — the third of the four answers. $5.26 is the answer most people give, and $5.26 is what the house edge takes out of a single $100 bet: that answer holds the house edge up against the buy-in as if the buy-in were bet once and put away. $20.00 is the bill for one hour rather than two. And there is an average — a firm one — even though no single evening is likely to land exactly on it.
Where this leads
19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · Play responsibly · help, day or night: Gambling Support BC 1-888-795-6111, 24 hours
Further reading
- Criminal Code, section 207: permitted lotteries · Justice Laws Website, Government of CanadaThe section that lets a province, and only a province, conduct and manage a lottery scheme — the sentence every casino in the country stands on.
- About Casinos BC · British Columbia Lottery Corporation (Casinos BC)Who conducts the gaming in one province and who runs the room, in the corporation’s own two sentences.
- Annual Report 2024–25 · Ontario Lottery and Gaming CorporationWhat a provincial gaming corporation publishes about itself: what it conducts, and what share of the money brought to the tables it keeps.
- Protecting the public · Independent Gambling Control Office, Province of British ColumbiaWhat a provincial regulator does, who is allowed to run the games, and where a complaint about a casino goes.
- Minimum Technical Standards for Gaming — 11. Game Behaviour · Alcohol and Gaming Commission of OntarioThe floor one regulator sets under a slot machine’s return, and its rule that the floor holds for every bet configuration.
- The house edge of casino games · Wizard of OddsWhere the house edge is defined, and the rating table of rounds an hour this track uses for every game.
How it’s worked out
Numbers, sources and hosts
Where this sits. Lesson 1 of this track works out where a figure like 5.26% comes from. This lesson takes that figure through a whole evening and asks how much of the money you carried in is gone at the end of it.
Numbers. Every figure on this page is worked out when the page is built, by the same code as our tools. The two wheel edges come from the published house-edge reference this track uses throughout. The blackjack figure is solved from the table rules BCLC publishes, by the same engine as our Blackjack strategy tool, which is why it is 0.53% and not the generic blackjack line in our house-edge table: that line is a different set of table rules. Rounds an hour come from the rating table published with the same reference, and it is a Las Vegas table rather than a local one. A bill is everything bet times the house edge, rounded to the cent; a share is that bill divided by the buy-in; a difference between two branches is worked out from the two amounts after rounding, so it always equals what the page shows you subtracting. The two bars in the cheap-table section are drawn from the same numbers: the short bar is to the long bar as the buy-in is to everything bet.
Agreement with our tools. An hour of the wheel at $10 a spin is $20.00, and two hours are $40.00; an hour of the blackjack table is $3.68, and three hours are $11.05. That is the same function that answers Price of an hour, so the two pages cannot disagree.
Where one of our tools gives a different number, and why. $40.00 is the price of 76 spins if the chips last through all 76 spins. How long will it last? works the same evening out with its own model, in which there is nothing to bet with once the buy-in is gone: all 76 spins happen on 60.4% of evenings, and across every evening, the short ones included, the wheel takes about $33.09 of the $100 rather than $40.00. Both are honest and they answer different questions; the gap between them is the evenings that ended early.
A third denominator, which this page does not use. The same reference names a measurement taken against every dollar that ends up at risk, including money added to a bet after it is down. It is the right figure for games where a bet can grow mid-round, and it is not the distinction this lesson is about: here the bet stays the same size and gets made again, which is a different thing from one bet getting bigger.
What we do not print. No figure for how much any particular room keeps of any particular buy-in: nobody we could read publishes one, and the arithmetic on this page is not a substitute for one. And no claim about how a single evening will end.
Hosts. Leo and Maya are illustrated characters. Their backstories, a former dealer and a former floor supervisor, are written for the course: neither is a real person, and neither speaks for any casino. The rules and numbers on this page come from the sources it cites, not from their experience.
Two payout figures with two denominators
Province wide payouts at land-based casinos were 91.5% for slots, 78.5% for live table games and 92.2% for sportsbook in fiscal 2024-25 (fiscal 2023-24 – 91.7%, 78.6% and 91.4%, respectively).
The payout metric for live table games is calculated using table games hold, a metric consistently used for live table games across the gaming industry.
This metric does not account for all wagers placed on live table games; however, it provides the percentage of all gaming chips purchased by customers that are retained by the casino.
Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation · Annual Report 2024–25 · read
What the house edge is a share of
The house edge is defined as the ratio of the average loss to the initial bet
Rounds an hour
The following table shows the average hands per hour and the house edge for comp purposes various games.
The house edge figures are higher than those above, because the above figures assume optimal strategy, and those below reflect player errors and average type of bet made.
This table was given to me anonymously by an executive with a major Strip casino and is used for rating players.
Hold in an operator’s own words
At table games, Players Club Points are earned based on a combination of average bet, theoretical hold percentage, game speed and length of play.
What a provincial operator publishes about payouts
Province wide payouts at land-based casinos were 91.5% for slots, 78.5% for live table games and 92.2% for sportsbook in fiscal 2024-25 (fiscal 2023-24 – 91.7%, 78.6% and 91.4%, respectively).
The payout metric for live table games is calculated using table games hold, a metric consistently used for live table games across the gaming industry.
This metric does not account for all wagers placed on live table games; however, it provides the percentage of all gaming chips purchased by customers that are retained by the casino.
Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation · Annual Report 2024–25 · read
A third way of measuring the same loss
The house edge is defined as the ratio of the average loss to the initial bet
This measurement is defined as the average loss divided by total money bet
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