Wherever and whenever any of us enters a casino, we all come in with the same hopes. We tell ourselves to take it down a notch and lower our expectations, but in truth, what we imagine is walking out with a suitcase full of dollars. That suitcase is so overflowing with money that bills are falling out, and like Hansel and Gretel, you’re leaving a trail of people fighting for them. Maybe you get a bit of Sean Connery action on your hands with a flirtatious hostess, but that’s pushing it.

However, this is rarely (read: never) true. Casinos exist due to the fact that, during an extended period of time, they always win. When you pop your casino cherry, you get overwhelmed by the luxury, you’re not really a master at playing the casino games on offer, and you’re basically bound to lose.

But when you approach gambling with doing research beforehand, you can win more often, or, to be precise, you can increase your chances. The truth is, the best casino games to win money with are, in fact, casino games with the best odds. To determine which of them give you better odds of winning, finding out the house edge they come with is essential. The house edge is a metric which tells how many rounds (in the long run) finish with the casino winning. Consequently, the lower the house edge, the higher the chances you’ll win.

Now, let’s check out some of the most popular games gamblers enjoy and see which of them represent casino games with the best odds.

Games to Avoid

If your wish is to walk away with a greater amount of money than you walked in with, lottery doesn’t represent some of the best casino games to win big. Games like Keno and Bingo are games of chance, as they don’t involve any skill. However, unlike slot machines, lotteries revolve around guessing which numbers will be picked, and your odds are not favorable. As a result, they come with some of the highest house advantages in gaming. Bingo has a house edge of 11%. Even worse is Keno, with 25%. Likewise, other games you should definitely avoid are Big Wheel and Big Six, which have a house advantage of around 23%.

Concerning other games of chance, you should be wary and play them only if you’re clear about the rules and their progression. For instance, if you join a craps table, depending on which bet you make, you can face a house edge from 1% all the way to 21%. The same goes for Sic Bo, where the advantage fluctuates even more. Players bet with the edge going from 2,78% to 47,2%. If you’re not an experienced Sic Bo player, it’s more than likely not to be one of the casino games with the best odds for you.

Table Games

The general rule is, the more skill involved in a game, the better the house edge. Some card games, like poker, for instance, have a house edge of 0%. But this doesn’t make variants of poker the best casino games to win money with. The nonexistent house edge means that none of the pot money goes to the casino — which is logical since the dealer isn’t a participant. However, winning in poker takes a lot of skill and experience, so don’t sit down at a table expecting to win on your first try.

Out of all the games which feature a house edge, baccarat and blackjack come with the best odds for the player. With blackjack, that percentage stands at 1,5%. But even here, as always, you’ll do better if you know how to properly play it. Choose single-deck blackjack, as with only 52 cards at disposal, the dealer has lower chances of beating you to 21. Also, practice basic blackjack strategy charts, which will teach you what the right play in each situation is. Additionally, if you master the game and learn the art of card counting, you can even turn the odds into your favor and have winning rounds come up more regularly than losing ones.

Perhaps the best game in this regard is baccarat. The goal is to have your cards sum up to nine, and when you go overboard, you don’t bust — you just subtract ten. However, unlike in blackjack, you’re not competing against the dealer. Rather, you get to choose what you think the outcome will be — there are three bets: player (your hand wins), banker (the dealer wins), and ties. These bets come with the following advantages: 14,36% on ties, 1,24% on player bets, and 1,06% on banker bets.

Roulette

Roulette represents one of the classic casino games which are pretty much synonymous with gambling. Just like Keno and real money slots, roulette is also a game of chance. With roulette, the point of it is to guess where a ball will land once the wheel stops — your guess is as good as any. While you can’t actually predict the outcome, you can increase your chances by making the right choice.

There are three common types of roulette — or, rather yet, types of a roulette table. The main difference between the major ones is in the layout of the table. European Roulette has one green spot — a zero. Added to 36 other positions, there are 37 spots overall. American Roulette, on the other hand, has an additional spot, with two green positions (0 and 00). As a result, European Roulette offers you better odds, with a house advantage of 2,70%, as opposed to the American’s 5,26%.

Another version, French Roulette, is the least common variant, mainly because it’s the most favorable for the player. The wheel layout doesn’t differ from European Roulette, but thanks to its ’half back’ rule, the edge is at 1,35%. The rule in question states that, whenever the ball stops on a zero, the casino keeps only half of even money bets (bets which give you around 50–50 chances, like going on red or black).

Best Slot Machines to Play

Going in tone with the rest, highest payout slot machines are the slot machines with the lowest edge. With slots, we take into regard a statistic named Return to Player (or RTP for short). RTP shows how much money will remain in the player’s possession. In essence, it’s the opposite of the house advantage. For example, slots with the RTP of 95% translate into having a house edge of 5%. Consequently, best slot machines to play are those that have the highest RTP.

Keep in mind, though, that RTP is measured over the machine’s lifetime — it’s not a guarantee you’ll always win. An RTP of 97% doesn’t signify you’ll win 97 times out of 100. But it also doesn’t mean you ought to disregard it completely. It’s an indication that lets you know which game to pick when you play slots for real money.

Highest Payout Slot Machines

When you’re choosing the best slot machines to play, you should think about where you’re going to do it. Online casinos give you much more generous odds. For instance, the best slot you’ll find in a brick-and-mortar casino will offer you an RTP of 90%. In online gaming, slot machines are more generous — their RTPs range from 92–97 percent. If they look around thoroughly enough, slot players can come across machines that pay even more often, with RTPs of 98% and higher.

The thing is, you’re generally better off with online slots. Due to no physical constraints, web casinos (webinos?) can accommodate more games, meaning that you have the option to access over 2000 games straight from your laptop. With such an impressive selection of games, slot machines vary from classic three-reelers to video slots with five, six, or even seven reels.

We’ll give you a list of ten of the highest payout slot machines you are able to play online, together with their RTPs:

Progressive Jackpots

Slot machines with progressive jackpots can be a double-edged sword. If you get lucky enough to hit it, the progressive jackpot will give you a reward in the shape of great prizes which will fulfill your Hansel and Gretel fantasy we talked about earlier on. But as always, don’t forget casinos are not members of The Salvation Army — their aim is to take your money, not give it to you. With this in mind, although games with progressive jackpots promise great rewards, they come with worse odds of winning.

But more often than not, online casinos run a networked system of progressive jackpots. This means that players from different casinos playing the same slot contribute to the same community pot. This allows for the jackpot to often rise over $1 million, but at the same time, it gives you competition. The odds of getting a progressive jackpot are slim as it is, having to beat hundreds of other players to it makes it only worse.

Your Turn to Win

The optimal way to determine which game comes with the best odds is to find out what house advantage it comes with. When the house edge is lower, your chances of winning are better. Baccarat and blackjack are the most courteous towards players, while you should steer clear from Keno and wheel of fortune variants.

With slot games, RTP rates are important, as they show what your odds are of landing that winning spin. Online slots come with better RTPs, so you’ll get more success if you play from your laptop or mobile.

Even if you choose the game with the best possible odds, you’re not guaranteed to win — the odds are and always will be against you. The more time you spend playing, you’ll be losing more money as well (statistically). Consider this loss of money as the price of entertainment you get out of it. Still, if getting rewards is what gets you going (let’s face it, that’s why everyone plays), now you know how to give yourself better chances. Good luck!