Las Vegas Table Minimums and House Edge: What Each Game Really Costs (2026 Data)

A $25 blackjack table and a $25 roulette table look like the same night out. They are not. At the play speeds one major Strip casino uses to rate players, a $25 double-zero roulette table costs about six times as much per hour as $25 blackjack with good rules, and a small line of print on the blackjack felt, "Blackjack pays 6 to 5," roughly quadruples what that game costs you.

This guide puts numbers on those differences. It uses the Nevada Gaming Control Board's August 2026 revenue report, which covers the twelve months from September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026, plus published house-edge math and the most recent public table-minimum surveys. Where a figure is our own calculation, we show the formula. All Nevada Gaming Control Board figures here are for the twelve months to August 31, 2026; we will update them when the Board releases its September 2026 report.

Two ground rules. First, every casino game on this page favors the house, so the goal is to understand the price of the entertainment, not to beat it. Second, you must be 21 or older to gamble in Nevada.

House edge and casino win are two different numbers

You will see two kinds of percentages quoted about casino games, and mixing them up is the most common mistake in gambling math.

House edge is theoretical. It is the average share of each bet the casino expects to keep over the long run, assuming correct play. A 1.41% edge on the craps pass line means a $25 pass-line bet loses about 35 cents on average. The figures in this guide come from the Wizard of Odds house-edge table, the standard public reference, which counts ties and assumes optimal or near-optimal strategy.

Win percent is what the casino actually reported. The Nevada Gaming Control Board publishes it every month, by game and by area. For slot machines the Board defines it as the reported win divided by the total dollar amount played, so slot win percent behaves like a real-world hold on every wager.

For table games the Board's win percent is a different ratio, which the Board says has been adjusted for the effects of credit play. In standard casino accounting, table hold is measured against the drop: the cash and markers players exchange for chips. A 2014 UNLV hospitality master's thesis, citing casino-management texts, defines table hold as win divided by drop. Because the same chips are bet over and over, total wagers are many times the drop, so table hold is far higher than the house edge. As gaming writer Alan Krigman puts it, table hold "is influenced by edge but is not analogous to it" because it also depends on how long players keep betting from their buy-ins.

That is how a game with an edge under 1% can show a double-digit win percent. Over the last twelve months the Strip won $943.9 million at blackjack at an 11.91% win percent. The house did not take 11.91% of every bet. It kept 11.91% of the chips players bought, after those chips had circulated through many hands.

The practical lesson: use house edge to compare bets, and use win percent to see how much of what visitors bring to the tables the casinos end up keeping.

Source: Wizard of Odds and, for the 0.46% and 1.82% blackjack rows, the Wizard of Odds 6:5 blackjack analysis, both checked October 20, 2026. Edges assume optimal play; real players make mistakes, so their effective edge is higher.

Three patterns stand out. The cheapest bets in the building are the "boring" ones: blackjack with good rules, the craps pass line with odds, and baccarat banker. Side bets and proposition bets, such as the tie in baccarat, hardways and any seven in craps, and the Big Six wheel, cost roughly 6 to more than 50 times as much per dollar bet as a good blackjack game or the pass line. And the same game can be cheap or expensive depending on one rule.

What the Nevada data actually shows

Read the chart as a measure of how much of the money players bring to each game ends up with the casino, not as the price of a single bet.

On the Strip, the table games with the highest win percent are the carnival-style poker games: Three Card Poker at 31.11%, Let It Ride at 28.80% and Ultimate Texas Hold'em at 22.48%. Their base-game edges are modest, between 2.19% and 3.51%, but each is played with extra wagers and optional side bets with higher edges, which likely helps explain the gap. Blackjack, the game with the lowest edge, has the lowest table win percent at 11.91%.

Downtown blackjack shows a higher win percent than the Strip, 13.97% versus 11.91%, even though Downtown is known for lower minimums. One plausible reason is that lower-limit tables are more likely to use 6:5 payouts and carry side bets, while big Strip blackjack players often play high-limit games with better rules. The Board's data does not break results down by rule set, so treat that as a hypothesis, not a finding.

Scale matters too. The Strip reported $943.9 million of blackjack win and 1,012 average blackjack tables over the year; Downtown reported $59.6 million from 190 tables. Strip baccarat alone won $1.53 billion at a 15.80% win percent, more than any other table game.

Slots are different. Their win percent is measured against every dollar played, so the Strip's 7.75% means slot players lost about 7.75 cents of every dollar they put through the machines, more than many table bets. Penny machines held 10.53% on the Strip and $1 machines 7.17%. Downtown slots held 8.36% overall.

Table minimums on the Strip and Downtown in 2026

Nevada does not publish table minimums; casinos set and change them by the hour. The most detailed public tracker is Vegas Advantage, which surveys casinos in person and summarizes the results for free, with property-by-property detail for subscribers. Its 2026 Strip survey says the minimum for a 3:2 blackjack game on the Strip "is usually $25 or $50, even during slower hours," can be found as low as $15, and "may be $100 when it is busy."

The cheapest live games are almost always the worst. Vegas Advantage reported in January 2026 that Slots A Fun and Excalibur deal $5 blackjack that pays 6:5. The same report said The STRAT had become the only Strip casino paying 3:2 on all blackjacks, and that its surveyors had twice seen single-zero roulette there at a $15 minimum, which the site called the cheapest single-zero roulette in the Las Vegas market. In its May 2026 Strip survey, Vegas Advantage found The STRAT dealing three blackjack games, all paying 3:2, with minimums from $5 to $25.

Caesars Entertainment properties, the same report said, now deal $25 3:2 six- or eight-deck blackjack on most casino floors, usually $50 at Caesars Palace, while their 6:5 games are usually $15. For the best rules, look in high-limit rooms: Vegas Advantage found stand-on-all-17 six-deck games at 16 Strip casinos with $50 to $500 minimums. With surrender and re-split aces the house edge is around 0.28%; Vegas Advantage puts the Caesars-property versions at about 0.35%.

Downtown and locals casinos usually offer the same rules at lower typical minimums. Vegas Advantage counted 3:2 hit-soft-17 shoe games at 7 Downtown casinos with $10 to $50 minimums and 25 locals and off-Strip casinos at $5 to $25, against $5 to $500 at 25 Strip casinos. Most Downtown casinos sit on or near the Fremont Street Experience, so comparing several pits takes only a short walk. Circa, Downtown, deals a six-deck stand-on-all-17 game in its high-limit area with a house edge of about 0.42%.

Sources: Vegas Advantage Strip blackjack survey (updated May 18, 2026) and six- and eight-deck survey (updated May 16, 2026), checked October 20, 2026. Ranges are the lowest minimums the surveyors expect to find, often in the mornings and afternoons; expect higher minimums during busy times. "Not summarized" means the free survey pages do not give that figure.

How to read the cost-per-hour chart

Each bar is a long-run average, not a prediction for your night. The math is simple enough to do at the table: multiply your bet by the number of decisions per hour and by the house edge.

Worked example, 3:2 blackjack: $25 × 70 hands × 0.46% = $8.05 an hour. The same table paying 6:5: $25 × 70 × 1.82% = $31.85. Double-zero roulette: $25 × 38 spins × 5.26% = $49.97. Single-zero roulette: $25 × 35 × 2.70% = $23.63. Craps pass line: $25 × 48 × 1.41% = $16.92. Baccarat banker: $25 × 72 × 1.06% = $19.08.

The speed figures come from a player-rating table the Wizard of Odds published in an older Ask the Wizard column, sourced to an anonymous executive at a major Strip casino; they are one casino's assumptions, not a market average. Real speed depends on how many people are at the table: a separate Wizard of Odds table, sourced to Jim Kilby's Casino Operations Management, puts blackjack at 209 hands an hour heads-up and 52 with seven players. A crowded table is slower, and therefore cheaper per hour.

Put the 2025 visitor averages next to it. The LVCVA found visitors who gambled spent 2.6 hours a day doing it. At $25 a hand, 2.6 hours of 3:2 blackjack has an expected cost of about $20.93; the same time at 6:5 is about $82.81, and at double-zero roulette about $129.92. Against the $848.95 average trip gambling budget reported by visitors who gambled, the game and table rules you choose matter more than which casino you are in.

Two cautions. That same rating table assumes a 0.75% blackjack edge rather than 0.46%; the Wizard of Odds explains that rating edges reflect player errors and the average mix of bets. And for craps we use the table's 48 decisions an hour, which it does not tie to a specific bet; adding odds lowers the combined edge, while proposition bets raise it sharply.

Why the hold swings month to month

In April 2026 Strip blackjack held 9.08%; in February it held 13.53%. Nothing about the rules changed. Short-run luck, the mix of high-limit play and how long players kept re-betting their chips all move the monthly number. Roulette ranged from 14.52% to 21.98% over the same eight months, and craps from 13.22% to 19.91%.

If a market as large as the Strip, with more than a thousand blackjack tables, swings by four percentage points from month to month, a single player's session will swing far more. That is why bankroll size matters as much as edge. A $200 bankroll at a $25 table is eight bets; a normal losing streak can end the session in minutes even at a low-edge game. At a $10 table the same $200 is twenty bets.

Over a full year the monthly swings even out: across the twelve months to August 31, 2026, Strip blackjack held 11.91%, between its worst (9.08%, April) and best (13.53%, February) months of 2026.

Responsible play, by the numbers

The math in this guide points to a few habits that make a casino trip cheaper and more fun. Decide in advance what the gambling part of your trip is worth to you, the way you would budget for a show. Pick games with lower edges and slower pace if you want the money to last. Take breaks: the 3D map makes it easy to plan a walk between casinos, and a fountain show costs nothing.

Do not chase losses. Every bet on this page has a negative expected value, so betting more to win back a loss only raises the expected cost. Do not gamble with money set aside for rent, bills or the trip home.