House Edge on Baccarat, Roulette, Sic Bo and Dragon Tiger

The house edge is what a bet costs you on average, and it lives inside the payout odds rather than arriving as a bill. Take roulette: a single-number bet is paid at 35 to 1 on a wheel of 37 pockets, and that one unpaid pocket is the entire edge. It is also the mirror of RTP: a bet with a 2.70% edge returns 97.30% over the long run.

House edge on nine live table bets, ranked

The figures below are worked out from each game’s standard dealing and payout rules, not taken from any lobby. Card-game figures assume an eight-deck shoe; check the table’s rules panel for its own deck count.

The spread is the useful part. The cheapest and dearest bets here sit on the same baccarat table, more than thirteen points apart.

House edge baccarat players should know about

Baccarat holds the lowest edge on the list, but only on its two main bets. The Tie looks tempting at 8 to 1, yet it carries roughly fourteen times the Banker’s edge. At Evolution’s no-commission tables the 5% charge disappears except in one case: a Banker win on a total of six returns only half the stake as profit. That single exception moves the Banker edge from roughly 1.06% up to roughly 1.46%.

Lightning Baccarat charges an extra 20% on top of every total bet to fund its random multiplier cards. That changes the maths enough that the plain figures above do not apply; read the table’s own help panel. More on the variants is on the baccarat tables and side bets page.

Roulette, sic bo and dragon tiger, worked out

1. Roulette. One green zero among 36 numbers means payouts priced for 36 outcomes on a 37-outcome wheel: 1/37, or 2.70%, on every standard bet. French tables with La Partage return half an even-money stake when zero lands, halving that edge to 1.35%. American wheels add a double zero, doubling it to 5.26%. See single-zero versus double-zero roulette wheels.
2. Sic bo. Of the 216 ways three dice can land, Small wins 105, Big wins 105, and the six triples beat both. That gap is 2.78%. Multiplier versions such as Super Sic Bo adjust their paytables to fund the multipliers; the Sicbo bets and triples page has more.
3. Dragon Tiger. The main bets depend on how a tie is settled at that table. The Tie bet pays 11 to 1, and with eight decks a tie lands about 7.47% of the time, which works out to roughly 10.36%. The dragon tiger tie rules page covers the side bets.

Crazy Time and other game shows

Evolution prints no RTP on its Crazy Time page, so no figure belongs in the table. Game shows mix several bets with different returns, and the in-game help panel is where the studio states them. The Crazy Time wheel segments page explains the bonus rounds without guessing at numbers.

Choosing tables with the edge in mind

The live section of MERRYPH’s lobby listed 1,025 entries across studios when it was read, so the choice is wide. A curator’s short version, using the edges above:

The rest of the live shelf sits on the live dealer tables hub, the glossary of casino terms gives each word a plain meaning, and the register form walkthrough covers opening an account. Play is for adults 21 and over.