Chuck Blount and Casino House Edges: ‘Some Should be Classified as Legal Robbery’
Writing for the San Antonio Express, Chuck Blount offered up a breakdown of the various house edges for each casino games, some of which he describes as “legal robbery”.
Keno is a game he calls “a never ending lottery” that “nobody wins big”. The house edge is a ridiculous 25 percent.
Blount writes:
The only story I can remember is the fictional one when the dude dies on the casino floor after finally hitting a jackpot, allowing Clark Griswold to claim the winnings and get out of the debt-sinkhole he created in the movie “Vegas Vacation.”
The slot pits are the area that generates the most profit per square foot in any casino, Blount writes.
The machines are programmed to always produce long-term profit for the casino.
As for the good games:
Craps - The craps table offers a mixture of good and bad house edges.
When you properly play the odds (additional money placed behind a pass line bet), you can whittle the casino edge down to zero.
Poker is another:
Casinos love to offer $2-4 limit and $1-2 no-limit Hold ’Em games. They are low-risk and novice and recreational players can get a lot of bang for their buck. If you can’t sit for a couple hours in $2-4 limit with your $200 buy-in, you are probably pretty lousy.
Most of these tables will be filled when you play, and that’s why they are so widely offered. With the rake, a casino makes just as much on the low-stakes games as they do the $50-$100 game being played in the roped off area of the poker room.
- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com
