Casino magnate Steve Wynn once revealed the biggest secret to success when visiting a casino. He said, “If you want to double your wallet’s thickness in a casino, you can do it in three easy steps:
Step 1: Take your cash out of your wallet.
Step 2: Fold the bills in half.
Step 3: Put the folded cash back in your wallet.”
While that may be the most practical advice when it comes to hitting it big in a casino, it’s not necessarily the most fun.
Players need to understand exactly how each casino game works in order to get the maximum return on their entertainment dollar.
The keys to getting the most out of a visit to any casino, land-based or online are: understanding the odds and calculating the house edge.
Casino Game Odds
Casinos love to trumpet the news of “big winners” who hit multi-million dollar jackpots or go on long lucky streaks. What they don’t tell their visitors about are the long odds of hitting that big score. Before a player sets foot in a casino or opens a web browser, he should understand the odds of the various games and the bets within those games before he puts hi money down on the table.
The House Advantage
The other aspect of casino payouts that players should remember is the “house edge”, also called the “house advantage”. The house edge is the difference between what the player gets paid and what the odds dictate he should win. For instance, in roulette, a winning single-number bet pays 35 to 1, so a $100 bet would pay $3500. On a single-zero wheel, the odds of hitting a single number are 36 to 1, so the player should get paid $3600. The $100 difference is the “house edge”.
