What an hour of play costs

Two people sit down at the same baccarat table with $10 a hand each. One puts the chips on the Banker box, the other on Tie. Same dealer, same speed, same money. How far apart are their two hours?

Leoformer dealer · rules and maths

People hear that the casino keeps a small share of every bet, and they file the whole thing under “small”. A small share of one bet really is nothing. The same share off every bet, round after round, for a whole evening, is a number you would have wanted in advance.

An hour is three numbers multiplied

A price is charged on every bet you make, and it is the house edge (the share of every dollar bet the casino keeps on average, over many rounds). It comes off the money you put down before the cards or the dice come out, which is what makes it something you can multiply.

A double-zero wheel at one example bet.

The three multiply, so halving any one of them halves the hour.

The bet: yours, every round

The table sets a floor under the bet, printed on the sign as the minimum (the smallest bet the table takes, for each bet on your spot). Reading one is a lesson of its own. Above that floor the bet is yours, and the bet is the only one of the three you set again on every round (one full go of the game: bets down, cards or dice, then settling).

A smaller bet buys a cheaper hour, and a smaller bet does not buy more hours. How much money the evening gets is a separate decision, settled before you go: your limit (the money and the time you decide on before you go: a ceiling, not a target). The Game plan tool writes that limit down, and Decide the money before you go is the lesson on choosing it.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

Before you sit, work out the hour, not just the limit. The limit says how much can go. The hour says how fast. Two different questions, two different answers — write both down.

It takes a minute at the kitchen table and it is impossible on the floor.

The house edge: chosen twice, then fixed

1. First you choose the gameBaccarat rather than roulette, craps rather than sic bo. The game you sit down at settles which house edges are on offer at all, and a game you never sit down at cannot charge you anything.
2. Then you choose which bet to make inside that gameOn one baccarat table the Banker box and the Tie box carry house edges of very different sizes, and the box the chips land on is the whole of the choice.
3. After the chips are down, nothingThere is no way of playing a baccarat hand that moves the house edge, and no amount of watching the table moves it either.

One game asks something of you, and only one. Blackjack hands you a decision (a choice you make after the bet is down that changes what the round costs on average; roulette and baccarat have none). The blackjack figure further down is the price for a player who plays every hand by the chart; without the chart it is several times larger — not a reason to stay away, a reason to know which of the two you are.

Rounds an hour: the table’s

The number nobody counts is the rounds an hour (how many rounds a table gets through in an hour, which is what turns a bet into an hourly cost), and the rounds an hour are regularly the largest of the three.

And one game is not one number of rounds. Fill the seats and the same wheel slows right down.

No source we could read has timed a Canadian table and published the count. The rounds an hour here come from the Las Vegas Strip rating table — the sheet a casino uses to rate its players — so take them as the shape of the thing, not as a measurement of the table in front of you.

A wheel with nobody else at it is the easiest one to follow and about 3.2 times dearer by the hour, at the same bet in the same seat. A quiet wheel being the easiest one to follow and a quiet wheel being the dearest by the hour are both true at once, and neither of those facts is a reason to pick one wheel over another. The rounds an hour are not yours to move; how long you stay is, and half the rounds you sit through is half the bill.

Machines are the extreme case. A reel machine settles about 600 spins an hour — as fast as the machine allows, one every six seconds — and at $1 a spin that turns the cheapest-looking seat on the floor into one of the dearest hours in the room. The figure is what the device permits, not how fast anybody plays.

One seat cannot be priced at all: an electronic table — a terminal running the same wheel on a screen — because no source we could read publishes its rounds an hour.

The three numbers, game by game

The same multiplication for the games a Canadian room usually deals, at one example bet.

It is not the same order. A spin of a reel machine costs $0.08 and a round of the Tie bet costs $1.44 — but give both an hour and they are only 2.2 times apart, with the machine second-dearest in the room. Nothing about the machine changed except how often a spin happens: 600 spins while the table deals 72 hands. A price per round and a price per hour are two different questions, and only the price per hour is about an evening.

The same figures, arranged for a different question — which table to sit at on a first visit — are in Which table for a first visit.

An average, not a forecast

$20 an hour does not mean you will be $20 down when the hour is up. It means that if the same hour were played thousands of times over, the average of all those hours would land about there.

• The average is not tonight’s billone hour lands anywhere, above the average or below it, and how far it strays is its own lesson later in this track
• The average is not a floor or a ceilingnothing holds a single evening to the average in either direction

Nothing here says that a cheaper hour is a good idea, or that any hour is. An hour has a price on average, which is a fact about the game and not a suggestion about you.

An hour, game by game, on one card

That is the lesson. The price of an hour at each game is a list worth having to hand when you choose a table, so here it is on one card.

Practice: same money, different bill

Two hours stand side by side, and you say which one costs less. On level 1 exactly one of the three numbers is different: 10 moments. On level 2 more than one moves at once, so the answer needs the multiplication rather than a glance: 8 moments. Level 3 is 7 things that happen at a table — which of the three numbers moved, and whose was it — and nothing there is scored.

The lesson is one run: every square on the strip below is one moment of it, and they are all 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.

Press a card itself or use the row of buttons below it. Every amount is an example bet, not the minimum of any casino: what a real table asks is on its sign. Two hours count as about the same when they are within 15% of each other — our rule, and it is on the screen.

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.

Where to check this

19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · Play responsibly · the helplines for every province are at the end of this page

The lesson before this one says where the house edge comes from; the one on the short and the long run says how far a single evening strays from the average on this page. Both are in this track.

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.

Mayaformer floor supervisor · manners, money and breaks

One line to take with you. Before you sit, multiply: the bet you mean to make, the rounds that table gets through, and the house edge on the bet you mean to make. If the answer is bigger than you expected, the move is a smaller bet or a shorter sitting.

Not a faster table to make it back. That is the same three numbers pointing the other way.

How it’s worked out