Casino Originals vs Slots: Where the House Edge Really Is
Return to player (RTP) is the share of every bet a game pays back over the long run; the house edge is the rest. A game with a 99% RTP has a 1% edge: bet $100 in total and you should expect to lose about $1 of it on average. Which games carry which edge is the single biggest decision you make at a casino, and the spread is far wider than most players assume.
Originals: usually about 1%
When we checked the casinos in our directory, several printed an RTP on their own games, which let us publish them as operator figures:
- Cloudbet: 99% on Dice, Limbo, Crash, Plinko, Keno, Hi Lo and more; Blackjack 99.43%.
- Flush: 99% on Dice, Limbo, Mines and Crash. Its pages contradict each other on several other games, so we publish only the figures two of them agree on.
- Duelbits: Mines 99.44%, Plinko 99.12%, Blackjack 99.29%.
The full, live comparison is in the published odds table. A 1% edge is about as low as a casino can sustainably go, and it is far below what most skin sites charge on their wheels and cases.
The exception that proves the rule
Chips.gg prints an RTP on all 14 of its Originals, and they are not all equal. Eleven sit at 99%. Roulette Classic is 97.3%, exactly the single-zero wheel. Roulette Fortune is 94%. Roulette Double is 87.5%, a 12.5% edge, more than twelve times the cost of the Dice game a few tiles away in the same lobby.
The lesson is not that Chips.gg is a bad casino: it is that it shows you the number, so you can avoid the bad game. At a casino that prints nothing, you would never know.
Roulette, done by hand
Roulette is the easiest game to check yourself, because the edge follows directly from the wheel:
- Single-zero (European): 37 pockets, a straight bet pays 36 for 1. RTP = 36/37 = 97.30%, edge 2.70%. That is exactly the figure Chips.gg prints for Roulette Classic and Flush lists for its standard roulette.
- Double-zero (American): 38 pockets, same payout. RTP = 36/38 = 94.74%, edge 5.26%.
- The CS2 15-tile wheel: 2x on 14 tiles, 14x on one. RTP = 93.33%, edge 6.67%, as shown on our CS2 reviews.
Slots: set by the studio, often 3-6%
Slots carry their own RTP, chosen by the studio that made them. The slot RTPs printed in the lobbies we checked ran from roughly 94% to 97%, an edge of 3-6%. Many studios also ship the same slot in several RTP versions and let the casino choose which to run, so the same title can pay less at one casino than another. The figure that applies to you is the one in that game's own information screen at that casino; check it before you play.
No slot is provably fair in the way an Original is. Studio RNGs are certified by test labs, which is a real assurance, but you cannot verify a spin yourself. Live dealer tables follow their rules: baccarat's banker bet returns about 98.94% (Cloudbet prints exactly that for its own baccarat), and blackjack with good rules and correct play returns over 99%.
What the edge costs you per hour
Expected loss is simply total amount wagered x house edge. At 500 bets an hour of $1 each:
- a 1% Original costs about $5 an hour;
- a 96% slot costs about $20 an hour;
- an 87.5% roulette variant costs about $62.50 an hour.
Short-term results swing far more than that, which is what makes gambling exciting, but the average always wins out. Our bankroll simulator shows how quickly, and the provably fair verifier lets you re-check any Original's roll from its seeds.
Every casino in our directory has its licence checked on the regulator’s own register, and is re-checked monthly.